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Reading CSV files safely

You're ready to read a CSV file of coffee sales. Use data validation functions to read in the data and validate the data types.

This exercise is part of the course

Cleaning Data in Java

View Course

Exercise instructions

  • Parse the format of the date string as M/d/yy.
  • Read the sales quantity as an Integer.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

import java.io.*;
import java.time.*;
import java.time.format.*;
import java.util.*;
import org.apache.commons.lang3.math.NumberUtils;

public class CoffeeSalesExample {
    private record CoffeeSales(LocalDate date, String coffeeName, String paymentMethod, Integer quantity, Double amount) {}

    private static LocalDate parseDate(String dateStr) {
    	// Parse the format of the date string
        return ____.____(dateStr, DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("M/d/yy"));
    }

    private static String validateNumeric(String value) {
        if (NumberUtils.isParsable(value)) return value;
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid: " + value);
    }
    
    public static double parsePrice(String priceText) {
        if (NumberUtils.isParsable(priceText.replace("$", ""))) {
            return Double.parseDouble(priceText.replace("$", ""));
        }
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid price: " + priceText);
    }

    public static CoffeeSales parseSalesData(String[] fields) {
        LocalDate publishDate = parseDate(fields[0]);
        String coffeeName = fields[1];
        String paymentMethod = fields[2];
        // Read quantity as an Integer
        Integer quantity = ____.____(validateNumeric(fields[3]));
        Double amount = parsePrice(fields[4]);
        return new CoffeeSales(publishDate, coffeeName, paymentMethod, quantity, amount);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
        List sales = new ArrayList<>();
        String filename = "coffee.csv";
        try (BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filename))) {
            String line = reader.readLine();
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                String[] fields = line.split(",");
                sales.add(parseSalesData(fields));
            }
        }
        sales.forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}
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