Converting Between CSV and JSON: A Complete Guide

CSV to JSON and JSON to CSV

Converting between CSV and JSON is a common developer task when working with data exports, APIs, and databases.

What is CSV?

CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a plain text format for tabular data where each line is a row and commas separate columns.

Common Edge Cases

• Quoted Values with Commas — Values containing commas must be wrapped in quotes
• Quoted Values with Newlines — Some CSV files contain newlines inside quoted fields
• Type Coercion — CSV is text-only, so numbers come as strings
• Missing Values — Empty cells vs null values
• Special Characters — Quotes inside quoted fields need escaping

JSON to CSV

When converting JSON arrays to CSV: extract headers from first object keys, map each object to a row, handle special characters.

Free Conversion Tools

• CSV to JSON — Convert CSV files to JSON
• JSON to CSV — Convert JSON arrays to CSV
• CSV Viewer — View CSV in a table