PHP Manual: fgetcsv

Description

array fgetcsv ( resource handle [, int length [, string delimiter [, string enclosure]]] )

handle: A valid file pointer to a file successfully opened by fopen(), popen(), or fsockopen().
length (Optional): Must be greater than the longest line (in characters) to be found in the CSV file (allowing for trailing line-end characters). It became optional in PHP 5. Omitting this parameter (or setting it to 0 in PHP 5.0.4 and later) the maximum line length is not limited, which is slightly slower.
delimiter (Optional): Set the field delimiter (one character only). Defaults as a comma.
enclosure (Optional): Set the field enclosure character (one character only). Defaults as a double quotation mark. Added in PHP 4.3.0.

Similar to fgets() except that fgetcsv() parses the line it reads for fields in CSV format and returns an array containing the fields read.

fgetcsv() returns FALSE on error, including end of file.

Note: A blank line in a CSV file will be returned as an array comprising a single null field, and will not be treated as an error.

Example 1. Read and print the entire contents of a CSV file

<?php
$row = 1;
$handle = fopen("test.csv", "r");
while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) !== FALSE) {
    $num = count($data);
    echo "<p> $num fields in line $row: <br /></p>\n";
    $row++;
    for ($c=0; $c < $num; $c++) {
        echo $data[$c] . "<br />\n";
    }
}
fclose($handle);
?>

fgetcsv() has been binary safe since PHP 4.3.5

Note: Locale setting is taken into account by this function. If LANG is e.g. en_US.UTF-8, files in one-byte encoding are read wrong by this function.

Note: If you are having problems with PHP not recognizing the line endings when reading files either on or created by a Macintosh computer, you might want to enable the auto_detect_line_endings run-time configuration option.