Parsing CSV files in C#, with header

Question

Is there a default/official/recommended way to parse CSV files in C#? I don\'t want to roll my own parser.

Also, I\'ve seen instances of people using ODBC/OLE DB to

Answer 1

CsvHelper (a library I maintain) will read a CSV file into custom objects.

var csv = new CsvReader( File.OpenText( "file.csv" ) );
var myCustomObjects = csv.GetRecords();

Sometimes you don't own the objects you're trying to read into. In this case, you can use fluent mapping because you can't put attributes on the class.

public sealed class MyCustomObjectMap : CsvClassMap
{
    public MyCustomObjectMap()
    {
        Map( m => m.Property1 ).Name( "Column Name" );
        Map( m => m.Property2 ).Index( 4 );
        Map( m => m.Property3 ).Ignore();
        Map( m => m.Property4 ).TypeConverter();
    }
}

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EDIT:

CsvReader now requires CultureInfo to be passed into the constuctor (https://github.com/JoshClose/CsvHelper/issues/1441).

Example:

var csv = new CsvReader(File.OpenText("file.csv"), System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);