Exporting data to a CSV file

Sometimes, it's more convenient to view data using a spreadsheet program such as LibreOffice, Microsoft Office Excel, or Apple Numbers. A standard way to export and import simple spreadsheet tables is through Comma Separated Values (CSVs).

In this recipe, we will use the cassava package to easily encode a CSV file out of a data structure.

Getting ready

Install the Cassava CSV package from cabal, using the following command line:

$ cabal install cassava

How to do it…

1. Import the relevant packages using the following code:

   import Data.Csv
   import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy as BSL

2. Define an association list of data that will be exported as CSV. For this recipe, we will pair letters and numbers together, as shown in the following code:

   myData :: [(Char, Int)]
   myData = zip ['A'..'Z'] [1..]

3. Run the encode function to convert the data structure into a lazy ByteString CSV representation, as shown in the following code:

   main = BSL.writeFile &quot...