We were working on a project, where it required to read a pipe separated values from the file. This is how we were doing it earlier
try
{
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(lstrFilePath);
while ((lstrReadLine = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
{
string[] lstrsplit = lstrReadLine.Split(new Char[] { '|' });
string lstrCOMP_NAME = lstrsplit[1];
string lstrFULL_NAME = lstrsplit[2];
string lstrFATHER_NAME = lstrsplit[3];
string lstrDESIGNATION = lstrsplit[4];
rowInsert["COMP_NAME"] = lstrCOMP_NAME;
rowInsert["FULL_NAME"] = lstrFULL_NAME;
rowInsert["FATHER_NAME"] = lstrFATHER_NAME;
rowInsert["DESIGNATION"] = lstrDESIGNATION;
dtANX.Rows.Add(rowInsert);
}
}
catch(Exception e)
{
// Error Logging
}
finally
{
// Will always be called
if (sr != null) // This check can be ignored though
sr.Close();
}
We started looking for a class (Helper Class), which can import/export flat files into DataTable/Array.
Then came across this useful dll FileHelpers. We converted our previous code to the one written below
Step 1) Created a class in .cs file and specify deliminator , which was | (pipe) in our case
[DelimitedRecord("|")]
public class Anxeure
{
public string COMP_NAME;
public string FULL_NAME;
public string FATHER_NAME;
public string DESIGNATION;
//..... and other columns in the sequence they will come in file.
}
Step 2) Create an instance of FileHelperEngine and read the file.
FileHelperEngine engine = new FileHelperEngine(typeof(Anxeure));
// To Read Use:
Anxeure[] res = engine.ReadFile("FileIn.txt") as Anxeure[];
//We could also export the data thus created after doing some manipulation
engine.WriteFile("FileOut.txt", res);
It is amazing how by writing two statements we could achieve a strongly typed output. Great
Hope it helps
Jatinder
