CSV Issue with PHP

[Ultima Designs]

We have written a PHP script that imports your contact list from Microsoft Outlook. It works fine, but Outlook itself presents a problem when exporting the CSV. The script uses explode to form an array, and then identifies each item in the array as one of our fields:

$values = explode("," , $values);

Pretty simple...but...

If you have a contact named "Smith, John", it exports that comma there. As a result, using explode breaks up Smith and John and puts them into the array as two separate items rather than one.

Any ideas on how can we get this to be "Smith, John" instead of "Smith" and "John"? Each value in the Outlook CSV is surrounded by a quotation mark on each side and is separated by commas ("Smith, John","abcd@abcd.net",etc.)

[Musicman]

Hi,

there may be a csv module in php to do it right. If not, consider ereg or preg functions to get the "data" items.
It may still be a problem if quote marks are allowed in the database (and appear doubled in the csv file)

Musicman

[Dowapdalilly]

Hi there,
you could always use tab delimeted files rather than csv files, when exporting from outlook...

but then again, if someone puts a tab character in an address field or something, then you're in the same boat

you'd have thought that microsoft would let export as xml by now, or would that be too useful

hope this helps,
Andy