How to use a custom separator in generating csv file

Question

I am trying to generated a CSV where i can use custom separator other than comma which is colon(:), which means while generating the csv if a string contains colon(:) then it should be appending double quotes around them.I have used apache commons api but i was unable to solve this purpose.I came across a new api which is super csv , i am trying using that to generate csv ,below is the code i have tried

 public class SuperCsvWriter{
 public static void main(String ar[]){
 List<Employee> emps = generateDemoData();
 StringWriter  writer = new StringWriter();
 ICsvBeanWriter beanWriter = new CsvBeanWriter(writer,CsvPreference.STANDARD_PREFERENCE);
 final String[] header = new String[] {"id:","name:","age:","Country"};
 final CellProcessor[] processors  = getProcessors();
 beanWriter.writeHeader(header);
 for(Employee emp: emps){
  beanWriter.write(emp,header,processors);
 }
 beanWriter.close();
 Sytem.out.println("CSV Data\n"+writer.toString());
}

private static CellProcessor[] getProcessors(){
 final CellProcessor[] processors = new CellProcessor[]{new UniqueHashCode(),//ID
 new NotNull(), //Name
 new Optional(),//Age
 new Optional() //Country
 };
 return processors;
 }

private static List<Employee> generateDemoData(){
 List<Employee> empsToAdd = new ArrayList<Employee>();
 Employee emp = new Employee();
 emp.setId("1");
 emp.setName("Pankaj, saha");
 emp.setAge(":30");

 Employee emp1 = new Employee();
 emp1.setId("2");
 emp1.setName("Timber:Hups");
 emp1.setAge(":10");
 emp1.setCountry("USA");

 empsToAdd.add(emp);
 empsToAdd.add(emp1);
 return empToAdd;

  My bean class 

 public class Employee{
 private String id;
 private String name;
 private String age;
 private String country;
  ..........................


  Now my requirement is whenever csv will be generated it should print like below 
  "id:","name:","age:",country
   1,"pankaj,saha",":30",
   2,"Timber:Hups",":10",USA


 But here i am getting exception 
 Exception in thread "main" org.supercsv.exception.SuperCsvReflectionException: unable to find 
 greater for field id: in class com.test.Employee - check that the context = null 

Not sure why i need to add colon in the bean class , as well as what is the to achieve the custom separator using super csv

Answer 1

This is happening because your column headers are not matching with name of the field.

Change

 final String[] header = new String[] {"id:","name:","age:","Country"};

to

final String[] header = new String[] {"id","name","age","Country"};

For custom separator to work, you need specify the same using CsvPreference

    CsvPreference csvPreference = new CsvPreference.Builder('"', ':', "\r\n").build();
    ICsvBeanWriter beanWriter = new CsvBeanWriter(writer, csvPreference);

Also, you can use Open CSV to generate the same. Not sure what issue you were facing. I am able to generate with colon (:) as a separator. Please find the sample below.

    ByteArrayOutputStream stream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    OutputStreamWriter outputStreamWriter = new OutputStreamWriter(stream);
    com.opencsv.CSVWriter writer = new com.opencsv.CSVWriter(outputStreamWriter,':', ICSVWriter.DEFAULT_QUOTE_CHARACTER,ICSVWriter.DEFAULT_ESCAPE_CHARACTER,ICSVWriter.DEFAULT_LINE_END);
    List<Employee> emps = generateDemoData();
    for (Employee emp : emps) {
        writer.writeNext(new String[]{emp.getName(),emp.getAge(),emp.getCountry()});
    }
    writer.flush();
    //byte[] bytes = stream.toByteArray();
    System.out.println("CSV Data\n"+new String(stream.toByteArray()));