super-csv

5.0.0 verified Fri May 01 auth: no python

A CSV processor library for Python, maintained by Open edX. Version 5.0.0 provides tools for reading and writing CSV files with a focus on handling BOM (Byte Order Mark) characters and encoding issues. The library supports Python 2.7 and 3.5+.

pip install super-csv

Common errors

error ImportError: No module named 'super_csv' ↓

cause Library not installed or wrong import path.

fix

Install via 'pip install super-csv' and import as 'from super_csv import ...'.

error UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte ↓

cause CSV file has a BOM (Byte Order Mark) but encoding is not set to 'utf-8-sig'.

fix

Pass encoding='utf-8-sig' when creating SuperCsvReader.

error AttributeError: 'SuperCsvReader' object has no attribute 'next' ↓

cause Using Python 3's iterator protocol incorrectly. In Python 3, use 'next(reader)' instead of 'reader.next()'.

fix

Replace 'reader.next()' with 'next(reader)'.

Warnings

breaking Python 2.7 support was dropped in version 4.0.0. Upgrade to Python 3.5+. ↓

fix Use Python 3.5 or later.

gotcha The default encoding for SuperCsvReader is 'utf-8', which fails on files with BOM. Use 'utf-8-sig' to handle BOM correctly. ↓

fix Specify encoding='utf-8-sig' when opening files.

deprecated The function `super_csv.update_from_dict` was deprecated in v4.1.0 and removed in v5.0.0. Use `SuperCsvWriter.writerow` with a dict instead. ↓

fix Replace calls to `update_from_dict` with `writer.writerow(dict_data)`.

Install

pip install super-csv==4.1.0

Imports

SuperCsvReader
wrong
```
import super_csv.SuperCsvReader
```
correct
```
from super_csv import SuperCsvReader
```
SuperCsvReader is a class in the super_csv module, not a submodule.
SuperCsvWriter
wrong
```
from super_csv.writer import SuperCsvWriter
```
correct
```
from super_csv import SuperCsvWriter
```
No writer submodule exists; SuperCsvWriter is in the top-level super_csv.

Quickstart

Basic CSV read/write with BOM-safe encoding.

from super_csv import SuperCsvReader, SuperCsvWriter
import os

# Reading a CSV file
reader = SuperCsvReader('data.csv', encoding='utf-8-sig')
for row in reader:
    print(row)

# Writing a CSV file
writer = SuperCsvWriter('output.csv', encoding='utf-8-sig')
writer.writeheader(['name', 'age'])
writer.writerow({'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30})
writer.close()