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

Single source file solution for straightforward parsing needs, useful. Deals with all the nasty edge cases. Such as new line normalization and handling new lines in quoted string literals. Your welcome!

If you CSV file has a header you just read out the column names (and compute column indexes) from the first row. Simple as that.

Note that Dump is a LINQPad method, you might want to remove that if you are not using LINQPad.

void Main()
{
    var file1 = "a,b,c\r\nx,y,z";
    CSV.ParseText(file1).Dump();

    var file2 = "a,\"b\",c\r\nx,\"y,z\"";
    CSV.ParseText(file2).Dump();

    var file3 = "a,\"b\",c\r\nx,\"y\r\nz\"";
    CSV.ParseText(file3).Dump();

    var file4 = "\"\"\"\"";
    CSV.ParseText(file4).Dump();
}

static class CSV
{
    public struct Record
    {
        public readonly string[] Row;

        public string this[int index] => Row[index];

        public Record(string[] row)
        {
            Row = row;
        }
    }

    public static List ParseText(string text)
    {
        return Parse(new StringReader(text));
    }

    public static List ParseFile(string fn)
    {
        using (var reader = File.OpenText(fn))
        {
            return Parse(reader);
        }
    }

    public static List Parse(TextReader reader)
    {
        var data = new List();

        var col = new StringBuilder();
        var row = new List();
        for (; ; )
        {
            var ln = reader.ReadLine();
            if (ln == null) break;
            if (Tokenize(ln, col, row))
            {
                data.Add(new Record(row.ToArray()));
                row.Clear();
            }
        }

        return data;
    }

    public static bool Tokenize(string s, StringBuilder col, List row)
    {
        int i = 0;

        if (col.Length > 0)
        {
            col.AppendLine(); // continuation

            if (!TokenizeQuote(s, ref i, col, row))
            {
                return false;
            }
        }

        while (i < s.Length)
        {
            var ch = s[i];
            if (ch == ',')
            {
                row.Add(col.ToString().Trim());
                col.Length = 0;
                i++;
            }
            else if (ch == '"')
            {
                i++;
                if (!TokenizeQuote(s, ref i, col, row))
                {
                    return false;
                }
            }
            else
            {
                col.Append(ch);
                i++;
            }
        }

        if (col.Length > 0)
        {
            row.Add(col.ToString().Trim());
            col.Length = 0;
        }

        return true;
    }

    public static bool TokenizeQuote(string s, ref int i, StringBuilder col, List row)
    {
        while (i < s.Length)
        {
            var ch = s[i];
            if (ch == '"')
            {
                // escape sequence
                if (i + 1 < s.Length && s[i + 1] == '"')
                {
                    col.Append('"');
                    i++;
                    i++;
                    continue;
                }
                i++;
                return true;
            }
            else
            {
                col.Append(ch);
                i++;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }
}