Just upload your CSV file in the form below and it will automatically get converted to a YAML file. In the tool options, you can specify the field delimiter character, field quote character, and comment character to adapt the tool to custom CSV formats. Additionally, you can select the output YAML format: one that preserves CSV headers or one that excludes CSV headers.
Input CSV
Output YAML
Tool options
Adjust CSV input
Enter the character used to delimit columns in the CSV file.
Enter the quote character used to quote the CSV fields.
Enter the character indicating the start of a comment line. Lines starting with this symbol will be skipped.
Conversion Options
Keep the first row as column names.
Enable to prevent the conversion of empty lines in the input CSV file.
Adjust YAML indentation
Set the number of spaces to use for YAML indentation.
What is a Convert CSV to YAML?
This tool transforms CSV (Comma Separated Values) data into the YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) data. CSV is a simple, tabular format that is used to represent matrix-like data types consisting of rows and columns. YAML, on the other hand, is a more advanced format (actually a superset of JSON), which creates more human-readable data for serialization, and it supports lists, dictionaries, and nested objects. This program supports various input CSV formats – the input data can be comma-separated (default), semicolon-separated, pipe-separated, or use another completely different delimiter. You can specify the exact delimiter your data uses in the options. Similarly, in the options, you can specify the quote character that is used to wrap CSV fields (by default a double-quote symbol). You can also skip lines that start with comments by specifying the comment symbols in the options. This allows you to keep your data clean by skipping unnecessary lines. There are two ways to convert CSV to YAML. The first method converts each CSV row into a YAML list. The second method extracts headers from the first CSV row and creates YAML objects with keys based on these headers. You can also customize the output YAML format by specifying the number of spaces for indenting YAML structures. If you need to perform the reverse conversion, that is, transform YAML into CSV, you can use our Convert YAML to CSV tool. Csv-abulous!
Convert CSV to YAML Examples
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In this example, we transform a short CSV file containing a music playlist into structured YAML data. The input CSV contains five records with three columns each and the output YAML contains five lists of lists (one list for each CSV record). In YAML, lists start with the "-" symbol and the nested lists are indented with two spaces
Adjust CSV input
Enter the character used to delimit columns in the CSV file.
Enter the quote character used to quote the CSV fields.
Enter the character indicating the start of a comment line. Lines starting with this symbol will be skipped.
Conversion Options
Keep the first row as column names.
Enable to prevent the conversion of empty lines in the input CSV file.
Adjust YAML indentation
Set the number of spaces to use for YAML indentation.
In this example, we are working with CSV data that summarizes key properties of three planets in our solar system. The data consists of three columns with headers "planet", "relative mass" (with "1" being the mass of earth), and "satellites". To preserve the header names in the output YAML data, we enable the "Transform Headers" option, creating a YAML file that contains a list of YAML objects, where each object has three keys: "planet", "relative mass", and "satellites".
Adjust CSV input
Enter the character used to delimit columns in the CSV file.
Enter the quote character used to quote the CSV fields.
Enter the character indicating the start of a comment line. Lines starting with this symbol will be skipped.
Conversion Options
Keep the first row as column names.
Enable to prevent the conversion of empty lines in the input CSV file.
Adjust YAML indentation
Set the number of spaces to use for YAML indentation.
In this example, we convert a CSV file with non-standard formatting into a regular YAML file. The input data uses a semicolon as a separator for the "product", "quantity", and "price" fields. It also contains empty lines and lines that are commented out. To make the program work with this custom CSV file, we input the semicolon symbol in the CSV delimiter options. To skip comments, we specify "#" as the symbol that starts comments. And to remove empty lines, we activate the option for skipping blank lines (that do not contain any symbols). In the output, we obtain a YAML file that contains a list of three objects, which use CSV headers as keys. Additionally, the objects in the YAML file are indented with four spaces.
Adjust CSV input
Enter the character used to delimit columns in the CSV file.
Enter the quote character used to quote the CSV fields.
Enter the character indicating the start of a comment line. Lines starting with this symbol will be skipped.
Conversion Options
Keep the first row as column names.
Enable to prevent the conversion of empty lines in the input CSV file.
Adjust YAML indentation
Set the number of spaces to use for YAML indentation.