promptfoo--promptfoo/examples/simple-csv/README.md

simple-csv (Simple CSV Example)

You can run this example with:

npx promptfoo@latest init --example simple-csv
cd simple-csv

This example demonstrates how to use CSV and Excel files for test cases in promptfoo, including working with JSON fields for language translation tasks.

Features Demonstrated

• CSV and Excel (XLSX) test case formats with JSON configuration fields
• Multiple prompt variations for different translation styles
• Style configuration via JSON fields (tone, length)
• Case-insensitive test assertions (icontains)

Project Structure

• promptfooconfig.yaml: Main configuration file
• prompts.txt: Contains two prompt templates:
  1. A formal translator prompt
  2. A conversational language assistant prompt
• tests.csv: Test cases for French and Pirate translations
• tests.xlsx: Same test cases in Excel format (optional)

Using Excel Files

To use Excel files instead of CSV:

1. Install the read-excel-file package (optional peer dependency):

   npm install read-excel-file
   

2. Update promptfooconfig.yaml to use the Excel file:

   tests: file://tests.xlsx
   

Excel files work exactly like CSV files - each row becomes a test case, and column headers become variable names.

Multi-sheet Excel Files

For workbooks with multiple sheets, you can specify which sheet to use:

# Use a specific sheet by name
tests: file://tests.xlsx#MyDataSheet

# Or by 1-based index (2 = second sheet)
tests: file://tests.xlsx#2

Running the Tests

From the root of this example, you can run the eval as:

promptfoo eval

To view the results in your browser:

promptfoo view

For more details on using CSV and Excel files in promptfoo, see our CSV Format documentation.