csvreader.fieldnames not recognized as an attribute of a csv reader object in python

If you truly want to use csv.reader instead of csv.DictReader, all you need to do is replace

reader.next() # read next line so header will be accessed
rfd_header = reader.fieldnames

by

rfd_header = reader.next()

Try csv.DictReader instead of csv.reader. The documentation says it too:

DictReader objects have the following public attribute:

csvreader.fieldnames - If not passed as a parameter when creating the object, this attribute is initialized upon first access or when the first record is read from the file.

http://docs.python.org/library/csv.html