Handling Quotes and Special Characters using OpenCSV

When working with CSV files in Java, one of the most common challenges is dealing with quotes and special characters. For example, what happens if a field contains commas, double quotes, or even line breaks? Without proper handling, your parser may break or misinterpret data.

Thankfully, OpenCSV provides built-in support for handling these tricky cases. In this post, we’ll walk through how to configure OpenCSV to read and write CSV files safely with quotes and special characters.

Handling Quotes and Special Characters using OpenCSV

Why Quotes and Special Characters Matter

CSV files often store real-world data, such as:

Commas inside text → "Doe, John"
Quotes inside text → "John said, ""Hello!"""
Special characters or new lines → "123 Main St.\nNew York, USA"

Without handling these correctly, your application might split a single field into multiple columns or fail to read the file altogether.

Maven Dependency

Add OpenCSV to your pom.xml:

<groupId>com.opencsv</groupId>

<artifactId>opencsv</artifactId>

</dependency>

Sample CSV (quotes.csv)

id,name,remarks

1,"John Doe","Lives in ""New York"" city"

2,"Jane Smith","Loves coding, reading, and hiking"

3,"Alice","Address: 123 Main St.\nApt 4B"

Java Code Example

package com.kscodes.opencsv;

import com.opencsv.CSVParserBuilder;

import com.opencsv.CSVReaderBuilder;

import com.opencsv.CSVReader;

import java.io.FileReader;

import java.util.List;

public class HandleQuotesAndSpecialChars {

public static void main(String[] args) {

String filePath = "quotes.csv";

try (CSVReader reader = new CSVReaderBuilder(new FileReader(filePath))

.withCSVParser(new CSVParserBuilder()

.withSeparator(',')

.withQuoteChar('"') // Handle quoted values

.build())

.build()) {

List<String[]> rows = reader.readAll();

for (String[] row : rows) {

System.out.println("ID: " + row[0] + ", Name: " + row[1] + ", Remarks: " + row[2]);

}

} catch (Exception e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

How It Works

withQuoteChar('"'): Ensures that values wrapped in quotes are treated as a single field, even if they contain commas or line breaks.
Double quotes inside text are handled automatically as escaped quotes ("").
Special characters like \n are preserved within the same field.

Best Practices

Always wrap fields containing commas, quotes, or new lines in double quotes.
Validate your CSV files with a linter or a text editor to confirm proper formatting.
Consider using CSVWriter from OpenCSV to safely write quoted values when generating files.

External References

Conclusion

Handling quotes and special characters in CSV files is essential for building robust applications. With OpenCSV, you don’t need to write complex parsing logic—just configure the parser to handle quotes properly, and your data remains clean and reliable.

By mastering this feature, you can confidently process even the most complex CSV files in your projects.