Example JavaScript code to parse CSV data

You can use the CSVToArray() function mentioned in this blog entry.

<script type="text/javascript">
    // ref: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1293163/2343
    // This will parse a delimited string into an array of
    // arrays. The default delimiter is the comma, but this
    // can be overriden in the second argument.
    function CSVToArray( strData, strDelimiter ){
        // Check to see if the delimiter is defined. If not,
        // then default to comma.
        strDelimiter = (strDelimiter || ",");

        // Create a regular expression to parse the CSV values.
        var objPattern = new RegExp(
            (
                // Delimiters.
                "(\\" + strDelimiter + "|\\r?\\n|\\r|^)" +

                // Quoted fields.
                "(?:\"([^\"]*(?:\"\"[^\"]*)*)\"|" +

                // Standard fields.
                "([^\"\\" + strDelimiter + "\\r\\n]*))"
            ),
            "gi"
            );


        // Create an array to hold our data. Give the array
        // a default empty first row.
        var arrData = [[]];

        // Create an array to hold our individual pattern
        // matching groups.
        var arrMatches = null;


        // Keep looping over the regular expression matches
        // until we can no longer find a match.
        while (arrMatches = objPattern.exec( strData )){

            // Get the delimiter that was found.
            var strMatchedDelimiter = arrMatches[ 1 ];

            // Check to see if the given delimiter has a length
            // (is not the start of string) and if it matches
            // field delimiter. If id does not, then we know
            // that this delimiter is a row delimiter.
            if (
                strMatchedDelimiter.length &&
                strMatchedDelimiter !== strDelimiter
                ){

                // Since we have reached a new row of data,
                // add an empty row to our data array.
                arrData.push( [] );

            }

            var strMatchedValue;

            // Now that we have our delimiter out of the way,
            // let's check to see which kind of value we
            // captured (quoted or unquoted).
            if (arrMatches[ 2 ]){

                // We found a quoted value. When we capture
                // this value, unescape any double quotes.
                strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 2 ].replace(
                    new RegExp( "\"\"", "g" ),
                    "\""
                    );

            } else {

                // We found a non-quoted value.
                strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 3 ];

            }


            // Now that we have our value string, let's add
            // it to the data array.
            arrData[ arrData.length - 1 ].push( strMatchedValue );
        }

        // Return the parsed data.
        return( arrData );
    }

</script>

jQuery-CSV

It's a jQuery plugin designed to work as an end-to-end solution for parsing CSV into JavaScript data. It handles every single edge case presented in RFC 4180, as well as some that pop up for Excel/Google spreadsheet exports (i.e., mostly involving null values) that the specification is missing.

Example:

track,artist,album,year

Dangerous,'Busta Rhymes','When Disaster Strikes',1997

// Calling this
music = $.csv.toArrays(csv)

// Outputs...
[
  ["track", "artist", "album", "year"],
  ["Dangerous", "Busta Rhymes", "When Disaster Strikes", "1997"]
]

console.log(music[1][2]) // Outputs: 'When Disaster Strikes'

Update:

Oh yeah, I should also probably mention that it's completely configurable.

music = $.csv.toArrays(csv, {
  delimiter: "'", // Sets a custom value delimiter character
  separator: ';', // Sets a custom field separator character
});

Update 2:

It now works with jQuery on Node.js too. So you have the option of doing either client-side or server-side parsing with the same library.

Update 3:

Since the Google Code shutdown, jquery-csv has been migrated to GitHub.

Disclaimer: I am also the author of jQuery-CSV.

I have an implementation as part of a spreadsheet project.

This code is not yet tested thoroughly, but anyone is welcome to use it.

As some of the answers noted though, your implementation can be much simpler if you actually have DSV or TSV file, as they disallow the use of the record and field separators in the values. CSV, on the other hand, can actually have commas and newlines inside a field, which breaks most regular expression and split-based approaches.

var CSV = {
    parse: function(csv, reviver) {
        reviver = reviver || function(r, c, v) { return v; };
        var chars = csv.split(''), c = 0, cc = chars.length, start, end, table = [], row;
        while (c < cc) {
            table.push(row = []);
            while (c < cc && '\r' !== chars[c] && '\n' !== chars[c]) {
                start = end = c;
                if ('"' === chars[c]){
                    start = end = ++c;
                    while (c < cc) {
                        if ('"' === chars[c]) {
                            if ('"' !== chars[c+1]) {
                                break;
                            }
                            else {
                                chars[++c] = ''; // unescape ""
                            }
                        }
                        end = ++c;
                    }
                    if ('"' === chars[c]) {
                        ++c;
                    }
                    while (c < cc && '\r' !== chars[c] && '\n' !== chars[c] && ',' !== chars[c]) {
                        ++c;
                    }
                } else {
                    while (c < cc && '\r' !== chars[c] && '\n' !== chars[c] && ',' !== chars[c]) {
                        end = ++c;
                    }
                }
                row.push(reviver(table.length-1, row.length, chars.slice(start, end).join('')));
                if (',' === chars[c]) {
                    ++c;
                }
            }
            if ('\r' === chars[c]) {
                ++c;
            }
            if ('\n' === chars[c]) {
                ++c;
            }
        }
        return table;
    },

    stringify: function(table, replacer) {
        replacer = replacer || function(r, c, v) { return v; };
        var csv = '', c, cc, r, rr = table.length, cell;
        for (r = 0; r < rr; ++r) {
            if (r) {
                csv += '\r\n';
            }
            for (c = 0, cc = table[r].length; c < cc; ++c) {
                if (c) {
                    csv += ',';
                }
                cell = replacer(r, c, table[r][c]);
                if (/[,\r\n"]/.test(cell)) {
                    cell = '"' + cell.replace(/"/g, '""') + '"';
                }
                csv += (cell || 0 === cell) ? cell : '';
            }
        }
        return csv;
    }
};