Check if csv has header in python

Posted on 31 Aug, 2021

Consider the following csv data

id, name, editor
1, Bhupesh, NeoVim
2, Mark, VSCode
3, Jennifer, JetBrains

1, Banana, 34
2, Apples, 5
3, Orange, 33
4, Mango, 12

The csv.Sniffer class provides a method called has_header which return True if the first row appears to be a header

import csv

csv_with_header = """
id, name, editor
1, Bhupesh, NeoVim
2, Mark, VSCode
3, Jennifer, JetBrains
"""

csv_without_header = """
1, Banana, 34
2, Apples, 5
3, Orange, 33
4, Mango, 12
"""

def has_header(file): 
        with open(file, 'r') as csvfile: 
        sniffer = csv.Sniffer()
        return sniffer.has_header(csvfile.read())


print(has_header('csv_with_header.csv'))
# true
print(has_header('csv_without_header.csv'))
# false