Reading and (custom) formatting a CSV (not \csvautotabular)

Question

Suppose I have a really long, really boring list of data in - let's say CSV, but converting to other formats is an option, when this can be done automatically - and I want to prepare a section in my LaTeX document using it as a data source.

csvautotabular isn't quite what I'm after, I'd like to be able to do it in a custom way - something like:

foo,bar,baz;
zip,boom,bang;

for input and getting in the output (aka: in the .dvi) something that would look like:

\begin{someenvironment}
\command1{foo} \command2{bar} \command3{baz}
\somecommand % end record 1 
\command1{zip} \command2{boom} \command3{bang}
\somecommand % end record 2
\end{someenvironment}

\someenvironment may or may not be a tabular environment and command1 are commands and aliases that I or others have already been defined.

I'd like to avoid preparing a script in some language that reads my data and outputs the above (admittedly, easy), because I'm working with others and I would rather not have them running the script on the data every time they need to compile their LaTeX file.

Any hint, however small, is appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Please, use csvsimple version 1.12 (2014/07/14) (or newer).

In my code, I made a helper macro \commandThreeX which is used to get rid of the semicolon at the end of the input lines. The rest is quite straigtforward using \csvreader:

\begin{filecontents*}{example.csv}
foo,bar,baz;
zip,boom,bang;
\end{filecontents*}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{csvsimple}

%%%% Your Macros %%%%
\newenvironment{someenvironment}{BEGINENV\par}{\par ENDENV}

\newcommand\commandOne[1]{ONE(#1)}
\newcommand\commandTwo[1]{TWO(#1)}
\newcommand\commandThree[1]{THREE(#1)}
\newcommand\somecommand{ENDRECORD\par}

%%%% Auxiliary %%%%
\def\commandThreeX#1;{\commandThree{#1}}


\begin{document}

\begin{someenvironment}
\csvreader[no head]{example.csv}{}
  {%
    \commandOne{\csvcoli}%
    \commandTwo{\csvcolii}%
    \begingroup\edef\x{\endgroup\noexpand\commandThreeX\csvcoliii}\x%
    \somecommand%
  }
\end{someenvironment}

\end{document}

The result is: