Question: I'm working on a csv parser, I want to read headers and the rest of the csv file separately.
Here is my code to read csv. 

The current code reads everything in the csv file, but I need to read headers separate.
please help me regarding this.

```
public class csv {

private void csvRead(File file)
{
    try
    {
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new FileReader(file));
    String strLine = "";
    StringTokenizer st = null;
    File cfile=new File("csv.txt");
    BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(cfile));
    int tokenNumber = 0;

    while( (strLine = br.readLine()) != null)
    {
            st = new StringTokenizer(strLine, ",");
            while(st.hasMoreTokens())
            {

                    tokenNumber++;
                    writer.write(tokenNumber+"  "+ st.nextToken());
                    writer.newLine();
            }

            tokenNumber = 0;
            writer.flush();
    }
}

    catch(Exception e)
    {
        e.getMessage();
    }
}

```

Answer: 
We have withHeader() method available in CSVFormat. If you use this option then you will be able to read the file using headers.

```java
CSVFormat format = CSVFormat.newFormat(',').withHeader();
Map<String, Integer> headerMap = dataCSVParser.getHeaderMap(); 

```

will give you all headers.

```
public class CSVFileReaderEx {
    public static void main(String[] args){
        readFile();
    }

    public static void readFile(){
         List<Map<String, String>> csvInputList = new CopyOnWriteArrayList<>();
         List<Map<String, Integer>> headerList = new CopyOnWriteArrayList<>();

         String fileName = "C:/test.csv";
         CSVFormat format = CSVFormat.newFormat(',').withHeader();

          try (BufferedReader inputReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(new File(fileName)));
                  CSVParser dataCSVParser = new CSVParser(inputReader, format); ) {

             List<CSVRecord> csvRecords = dataCSVParser.getRecords();

             Map<String, Integer> headerMap = dataCSVParser.getHeaderMap();
              headerList.add(headerMap);
              headerList.forEach(System.out::println);

             for(CSVRecord record : csvRecords){
                 Map<String, String> inputMap = new LinkedHashMap<>();

                 for(Map.Entry<String, Integer> header : headerMap.entrySet()){
                     inputMap.put(header.getKey(), record.get(header.getValue()));
                 }

                 if (!inputMap.isEmpty()) {
                     csvInputList.add(inputMap);
                } 
             }

             csvInputList.forEach(System.out::println);

          } catch (Exception e) {
             System.out.println(e);
          }
    }
}

```
Have you considered [OpenCSV](http://opencsv.sourceforge.net/)?

Previous question here...

[CSV API for Java](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/101100/csv-api-for-java)

Looks like you can split out the header quite easily...

```
String fileName = "data.csv";
CSVReader reader = new CSVReader(new FileReader(fileName ));

// if the first line is the header
String[] header = reader.readNext();

// iterate over reader.readNext until it returns null
String[] line = reader.readNext();

```