Generic class to CSV (all properties)

Question

Im looking for a way to create CSV from all class instances.

What i want is that i could export ANY class (all of its instances) to CSV.

Can some1 direct me to p

Answer 1

I am separating my answer into two sections: The first one is how to export some generic item list into csv, with encoding, headers - (it will build csv data only for specified headers, and will ignore unneeded properties).

public string ExportCsv(IEnumerable items, Dictionary headers)
{
    string result;
    using (TextWriter textWriter = new StreamWriter(myStream, myEncoding))
    {
        result = this.WriteDataAsCsvWriter(items, textWriter, headers);
    }
    return result;
}

private string WriteDataAsCsvWriter(IEnumerable items, TextWriter textWriter, Dictionary headers)
{
    //Add null validation

    ////print the columns headers
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    //Headers
    foreach (KeyValuePair kvp in headers)
    {
        sb.Append(ToCsv(kvp.Value));
        sb.Append(",");
    }
    sb.Remove(sb.Length - 1, 1);//the last ','
    sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);

    //the values
    foreach (var item in items)
    {
        try
        {
            Dictionary values = GetPropertiesValues(item, headers);

            foreach (var value in values)
            {
                sb.Append(ToCsv(value.Value));
                sb.Append(",");
            }
            sb.Remove(sb.Length - 1, 1);//the last ','
            sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);
        }
        catch (Exception e1)
        {
             //do something
        }
    }
    textWriter.Write(sb.ToString());

    return sb.ToString();
}

//Help function that encode text to csv:
public static string ToCsv(string input)
{
    if (input != null)
    {
        input = input.Replace("\r\n", string.Empty)
            .Replace("\r", string.Empty)
            .Replace("\n", string.Empty);
        if (input.Contains("\""))
        {
            input = input.Replace("\"", "\"\"");
        }

        input = "\"" + input + "\"";
    }

    return input;
}

This is the most important function, Its extracting the properties values out of (almost) any generic class.

private Dictionary GetPropertiesValues(object item, Dictionary headers)
{
    Dictionary values = new Dictionary();
    if (item == null)
    {
        return values;
    }

    //We need to make sure each value is coordinated with the headers, empty string 
    foreach (var key in headers.Keys)
    {
        values[key] = String.Empty;
    }

    Type t = item.GetType();
    PropertyInfo[] propertiesInfo = t.GetProperties();

    foreach (PropertyInfo propertiyInfo in propertiesInfo)
    {
        //it not complex: string, int, bool, Enum
        if ((propertiyInfo.PropertyType.Module.ScopeName == "CommonLanguageRuntimeLibrary") || propertiyInfo.PropertyType.IsEnum)
        {
            if (headers.ContainsKey(propertiyInfo.Name))
            {
                var value = propertiyInfo.GetValue(item, null);
                if (value != null)
                {
                    values[propertiyInfo.Name] = value.ToString();
                }                         
            }
        }
        else//It's complex property
        {
            if (propertiyInfo.GetIndexParameters().Length == 0)
            {
                Dictionary lst = GetPropertiesValues(propertiyInfo.GetValue(item, null), headers);
                foreach (var value in lst)
                {
                    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value.Value))
                    {
                        values[value.Key] = value.Value;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return values;
}

Example for GetPropertiesValues:

public MyClass 
{
    public string Name {get; set;}
    public MyEnum Type {get; set;}
    public MyClass2 Child {get; set;}
}
public MyClass2
{
    public int Age {get; set;}
    public DateTime MyDate {get; set;}
}

MyClass myClass = new MyClass()
{
    Name = "Bruce",
    Type = MyEnum.Sometype,
    Child = new MyClass2()
    {
        Age = 18,
        MyDate = DateTime.Now()
    }
};

Dictionary headers = new Dictionary();
headers.Add("Name", "CustomCaption_Name");
headers.Add("Type", "CustomCaption_Type");
headers.Add("Age", "CustomCaption_Age");

GetPropertiesValues(myClass, headers)); // OUTPUT: {{"Name","Bruce"},{"Type","Sometype"},{"Age","18"}}