How do I handle unknown fields safely using CSV with Swift?

When working with CSV data in Swift, handling unknown fields can be a challenge. To safely manage these unknown fields, it's essential to implement a strategy that can gracefully handle the absence of expected data without crashing the application.

One approach is to use a dictionary to represent the CSV rows, allowing you to check for the existence of keys before accessing their values. This way, you can avoid runtime errors due to missing fields.

// Example code in Swift to handle unknown fields in CSV data import Foundation func parseCSV(contentsOf url: URL) -> [[String: String]] { var result: [[String: String]] = [] let content = try! String(contentsOf: url) let rows = content.components(separatedBy: "\n") let headers = rows[0].components(separatedBy: ",") for row in rows[1...] { let values = row.components(separatedBy: ",") var dict: [String: String] = [:] for (index, header) in headers.enumerated() { if index < values.count { dict[header] = values[index] } else { dict[header] = "N/A" // Default value for unknown fields } } result.append(dict) } return result } // Usage if let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "data", withExtension: "csv") { let parsedData = parseCSV(contentsOf: url) print(parsedData) }

CSV Swift unknown fields data parsing safe handling