Complete Guide to Converting CSV to JSON Arrays: Delimiters, Quotes & Types

Comma-Separated Values (CSV) remain the standard export format for business spreadsheets (Excel, Google Sheets) and SQL database dumps. Converting CSV to JSON is essential when feeding legacy data into modern web interfaces and NoSQL datastores.

Core Rules of RFC 4180 CSV Parsing

Writing a simple string.split(',') parser is the #1 source of conversion bugs. Valid CSV files follow strict parsing conventions:

• Commas Inside Quoted Strings: A cell containing a comma must be enclosed in double quotes: "San Francisco, CA". A simple delimiter split will corrupt the column count.
• Escaped Double Quotes: To include a literal double quote inside a cell, double it: "The \"special\" edition".
• Multi-Line Records: Fields containing newlines must remain wrapped in quotes across lines until closed.

Type Casting Strategy During Conversion

A naive CSV-to-JSON converter treats every value as a string. A robust converter inspects values and casts them to appropriate JSON primitives:

1. Numbers: "42" or "19.99" $ ightarrow$ 42 or 19.99 (numeric type).
2. Booleans: "true" or "false" (case-insensitive) $ ightarrow$ true / false.
3. Null Values: Empty cells "" or "NULL" $ ightarrow$ null.

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