How to read a CSV file into a .NET Datatable

Question

How can I load a CSV file into a System.Data.DataTable, creating the datatable based on the CSV file?

Does the regular ADO.net functionality allow this?

Answer 1

Just sharing this extension methods, I hope that it can help someone.

public static List ToCSV(this DataSet ds, char separator = '|')
{
    List lResult = new List();

    foreach (DataTable dt in ds.Tables)
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        IEnumerable columnNames = dt.Columns.Cast().
                                          Select(column => column.ColumnName);
        sb.AppendLine(string.Join(separator.ToString(), columnNames));

        foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows)
        {
            IEnumerable fields = row.ItemArray.Select(field =>
              string.Concat("\"", field.ToString().Replace("\"", "\"\""), "\""));
            sb.AppendLine(string.Join(separator.ToString(), fields));
        }

        lResult.Add(sb.ToString());
    }
    return lResult;
}

public static DataSet CSVtoDataSet(this List collectionCSV, char separator = '|')
{
    var ds = new DataSet();

    foreach (var csv in collectionCSV)
    {
        var dt = new DataTable();

        var readHeader = false;
        foreach (var line in csv.Split(new[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None))
        {
            if (!readHeader)
            {
                foreach (var c in line.Split(separator))
                    dt.Columns.Add(c);
            }
            else
            {
                dt.Rows.Add(line.Split(separator));
            }
        }

        ds.Tables.Add(dt);
    }

    return ds;
}