Best way to parse csv file?

Bill Hand

I have a csv file that contains 10 columns. I specifically need to use 2 of those columns: reportid and amount. I could have multiple lines for each report id. I'd like to get the sum for each report id. What is the best way to accomplish this using c#? Thanks.

2 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Abhishek Kumar12y ago
Bill,

Follow the article below,

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/667317/Read-CSV-file-using-Csharp

Steps:

Read the file -> Fill the dataset -> manupulate according your need ->Display the Total for each report ID

Hope this will help , if you need sample code or solution please share the csv file.

Abhishek
Wim Sturkenboom12y ago
The, in my opinion, best way is to use one of the many dedicated classes that are available on the web. I use
- csv writer: http://knab.ws/blog/index.php?/archives/3-CSV-file-parser-and-writer-in-C-Part-1.html
- csv reader: http://knab.ws/blog/index.php?/archives/10-CSV-file-parser-and-writer-in-C-Part-2.html
The above supports all csv goodies like multiline fields, embedded quotes and embedded commas etc; not all parsers on the web do so. I've modified it for my use so it can handle different separators as well (standard is comma only).
Alternative for the reader can be the 'standard' TextFieldParser class; to use it, you need to add a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic to your project and to add using Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO to the files where you want to use it.
You can paste below text into a text file and call it whatever.csv. If the reader parses it correctly, you have a good parser. Note that it contains only two records and the last column of the first record contains two lines. Also, the first record contains a column with an embedded comma.
record 1,"a,b","c""d","line1
line 2"
record 2,x\y\z,x/y/z,empty ;)
Hope this helps.