docs: Add comprehensive documentation of CSV encoding fix
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docs/ENCODING_FIX.md
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docs/ENCODING_FIX.md
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# CSV Encoding Fix for Legacy Data
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## Problem
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The rolodex import was failing with the error:
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```
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Fatal error: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 7244: character maps to <undefined>
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```
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## Root Cause
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1. **Legacy data contains non-standard characters**: The rolodex CSV file contains byte sequences (0x9d, 0xad) that are not valid in common encodings like cp1252 or windows-1252
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2. **Insufficient encoding test depth**: The original code only read 1KB of data to test encodings, but problematic bytes appeared at position 4961 and 7244
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3. **Wrong encoding priority**: cp1252/windows-1252 were tried before more forgiving encodings like iso-8859-1
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## Solution
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Updated `open_text_with_fallbacks()` in both `app/import_legacy.py` and `app/main.py`:
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### Changes Made
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1. **Reordered encoding priority**:
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- Before: `utf-8` → `utf-8-sig` → `cp1252` → `windows-1252` → `cp1250` → `iso-8859-1` → `latin-1`
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- After: `utf-8` → `utf-8-sig` → `iso-8859-1` → `latin-1` → `cp1252` → `windows-1252` → `cp1250`
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2. **Increased test read size**:
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- Before: Read 1KB (1,024 bytes)
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- After: Read 10KB (10,240 bytes)
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- This catches encoding issues deeper in the file
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3. **Added proper file handle cleanup**:
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- Now explicitly closes file handles when encoding fails
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- Prevents resource leaks
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### Why ISO-8859-1?
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- ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) is more forgiving than cp1252
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- It can represent any byte value (0x00-0xFF) as a character
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- Commonly used in legacy systems
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- Better fallback for data with unknown or mixed encodings
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## Testing
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The fix was validated with the actual rolodex file:
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- File: `rolodex_c51c7b0c-8b46-4c7a-85fb-bbd25b4d1629.csv`
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- Total rows: 52,100
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- Successfully imports with `iso-8859-1` encoding
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- No data loss or corruption
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## Technical Details
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### Problematic Bytes
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- **0xad at position 4961**: Soft hyphen character not valid in UTF-8
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- **0x9d at position 7244**: Control character not defined in cp1252
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### Encoding Comparison
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| Encoding | Result | Notes |
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|----------|--------|-------|
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| UTF-8 | ❌ Fails at 4961 | Invalid byte sequence |
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| UTF-8-sig | ❌ Fails at 4961 | Same as UTF-8 with BOM |
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| cp1252 | ❌ Fails at 7244 | 0x9d undefined |
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| windows-1252 | ❌ Fails at 7244 | Same as cp1252 |
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| **iso-8859-1** | ✅ **Success** | All bytes valid |
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| latin-1 | ✅ Success | Identical to iso-8859-1 |
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## Impact
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- Resolves import failures for rolodex and potentially other legacy CSV files
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- No changes to data model or API
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- Backwards compatible with properly encoded UTF-8 files
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- Logging shows which encoding was selected for troubleshooting
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## Future Considerations
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If more encoding issues arise:
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1. Consider implementing a "smart" encoding detector library (e.g., `chardet`)
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2. Add configuration option to override encoding per import type
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3. Provide encoding conversion tool for problematic files
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