I'm not sure what you mean by "it doesn't really exist". OpenCSV works perfectly. A usage example from the official website:

CSVReader reader = new CSVReader(new FileReader("yourfile.csv"));
String [] nextLine;
while ((nextLine = reader.readNext()) != null) {
    // nextLine[] is an array of values from the line
    System.out.println(nextLine[0] + nextLine[1] + "etc...");
}

Note, that CSVReader wraps CSVParser which is more low-level. The above example should be sufficient for any regular use, though.

Had the same issue. A right-click on the project -> Maven -> 'Reload project' may probably fix it.

When you package Maven it won't package the dependencies into the jar, you need to either move them to where you're running it or create a fat jar like this:

clean compile assembly:single

It seems the class CSVParser does not exist in opencsv 1.8. This class was introduced in opencsv 2.1.

As such, you need to update your dependency to version 2.1 at least.

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sf.opencsv</groupId>
    <artifactId>opencsv</artifactId>
    <version>2.1</version>
</dependency>

Note that starting with the 3.x branch, the artifact was relocated to the com.opencsv:opencsv coordinate. It would be better to use the latest version of the library:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.opencsv</groupId>
    <artifactId>opencsv</artifactId>
    <version>3.7</version>
</dependency>

You will need to update your imports also to import com.opencsv.