Parsing of CSV file using Node/Express spits out weird \x001 codes

Question

I'm using Node and Express to fetch a .CSV file from a URL that I want to parse. The process of downloading it works just fine.

But when I use csv-parser to parse the file the output in the console looks like this:

Just tonnes of lines of weird looking byte code? If I use excel or numbers to open the CSV file regularly it works fine.

This is how the data in the csv file looks like:

My goal is to use a csv parser to convert each row into an object - I've seen many examples of parsers doing this.

Here's the code from node:

const broadcasterController = require('./broadcasterController');
const https = require('https');
const fs = require('fs');
const parser = require('csv-parser');

exports.queryFi = async (io) => {
    // let today = new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10);
    // let today = '2021-03-20';

    fetchInsidersCSV = async () => {
        //  Download a file and extract the destination
        function downloadFromUrl(url, dest) {
            return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
                var file = fs.createWriteStream(dest);
                https.get(url, function (response) {
                    response.pipe(file);
                    file.on('finish', function () {
                        file.close();
                        resolve(dest);
                    });
                }).on('error', function (err) {
                    // Handle errors
                    fs.unlinkSync(dest);
                    reject(new Error('Download failed.'));
                });
            });
        }
        await downloadFromUrl(
            `https://marknadssok.fi.se/Publiceringsklient/sv-SE/Search/Search?SearchFunctionType=Insyn&Utgivare=&PersonILedandeSt%C3%A4llningNamn=&Transaktionsdatum.From=&Transaktionsdatum.To=&Publiceringsdatum.From=2021-04-01&Publiceringsdatum.To=2021-04-01&button=export&Page=1`,
            'bar.csv'
        );
    };

    try {
        const results = [];
        // crawl the web page and start att page 1
        await fetchInsidersCSV();

        fs.createReadStream('bar.csv')
            .pipe(parser({ separator: ';' }))
            .on('data', (data) => results.push(data))
            .on('end', () => {
                console.log(results);
            });

    } catch (error) {
        console.log(error);
    }
};

Could anyone please help me with a code solution where the output is correct?

Answer 1

It looks to me like that data is in utf-16 encoding. So if we specify this in our fs.createReadStream(), we should get the correct result:

fs.createReadStream('bar.csv', { encoding: "utf-16le" })
    .pipe(parser({ separator: ';' }))
    .on('data', (data) => results.push(data))
    .on('end', () => {
        console.log(results);
    });

With this setting, I see an output like so:

[
  {
    Publiceringsdatum: '2021-04-01 23:59:28',
    Utgivare: 'Attana AB',
    'LEI-kod': '549300KAI93YCW5ISI45',
    'Anmälningsskyldig': 'Arne Nabseth',
    'Person i ledande ställning': 'Arne Nabseth',
    Befattning: 'Styrelseordförande',
    'Närstående': '',
    Korrigering: '',
    'Beskrivning av korrigering': '',
    'Är förstagångsrapportering': 'Ja',
    'Är kopplad till aktieprogram': '',
    'Karaktär': 'Avyttring',
    Instrumenttyp: 'Aktie',
    Instrumentnamn: 'Attana ',
    ISIN: 'SE0015222583',
    Transaktionsdatum: '2021-02-26 00:00:00',
    Volym: '80000',
    Volymsenhet: 'Antal',
    Pris: '1,6',
    Valuta: 'SEK',
    Handelsplats: 'NORDIC SME',
    Status: 'Aktuell',
    '': ''
  }
]

Answer 2

csv-parser contains an option to look at, correctly process, and remove the byte-order mark (BOM) at the beginning of an input file. You can use it like this:

    fs.createReadStream('bar.csv')
            .pipe(parser({ separator: ';', bom: true }))

The parser does the right thing for utf-8, utf-16le and utf-16be character sets. It works correctly even if an input file contains no BOM.

This is a good way to go if you don't have any control over creating the csv files.