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 read CSV via the Text driver, and a lot of people discourage this due to its "drawbacks." What are these drawbacks?

Ideally, I'm looking for a way through which I can read the CSV by column name, using the first record as the header / field names. Some of the answers given are correct but work to basically deserialize the file into classes.

Answer 1

This code reads csv to DataTable:

public static DataTable ReadCsv(string path)
{
    DataTable result = new DataTable("SomeData");
    using (TextFieldParser parser = new TextFieldParser(path))
    {
        parser.TextFieldType = FieldType.Delimited;
        parser.SetDelimiters(",");
        bool isFirstRow = true;
        //IList<string> headers = new List<string>();

        while (!parser.EndOfData)
        {
            string[] fields = parser.ReadFields();
            if (isFirstRow)
            {
                foreach (string field in fields)
                {
                    result.Columns.Add(new DataColumn(field, typeof(string)));
                }
                isFirstRow = false;
            }
            else
            {
                int i = 0;
                DataRow row = result.NewRow();
                foreach (string field in fields)
                {
                    row[i++] = field;
                }
                result.Rows.Add(row);
            }
        }
    }
    return result;
}

Answer 2

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<MyCustomObject>();

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<MyCustomObject>
{
    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<MySpecialTypeConverter>();
    }
}

Answer 3

Another one to this list, Cinchoo ETL - an open source library to read and write multiple file formats (CSV, flat file, Xml, JSON etc)

Sample below shows how to read CSV file quickly (No POCO object required)

string csv = @"Id, Name
1, Carl
2, Tom
3, Mark";

using (var p = ChoCSVReader.LoadText(csv)
    .WithFirstLineHeader()
    )
{
    foreach (var rec in p)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"Id: {rec.Id}");
        Console.WriteLine($"Name: {rec.Name}");
    }
}

Sample below shows how to read CSV file using POCO object

public partial class EmployeeRec
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

static void CSVTest()
{
    string csv = @"Id, Name
1, Carl
2, Tom
3, Mark";

    using (var p = ChoCSVReader<EmployeeRec>.LoadText(csv)
        .WithFirstLineHeader()
        )
    {
        foreach (var rec in p)
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"Id: {rec.Id}");
            Console.WriteLine($"Name: {rec.Name}");
        }
    }
}

Please check out articles at CodeProject on how to use it.

Answer 4

This solution is using the official Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly to parse CSV.

Advantages:

• delimiter escaping
• ignores Header
• trim spaces
• ignore comments

Code:

    using Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO;

    public static List<List<string>> ParseCSV (string csv)
    {
        List<List<string>> result = new List<List<string>>();


        // To use the TextFieldParser a reference to the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly has to be added to the project. 
        using (TextFieldParser parser = new TextFieldParser(new StringReader(csv))) 
        {
            parser.CommentTokens = new string[] { "#" };
            parser.SetDelimiters(new string[] { ";" });
            parser.HasFieldsEnclosedInQuotes = true;

            // Skip over header line.
            //parser.ReadLine();

            while (!parser.EndOfData)
            {
                var values = new List<string>();

                var readFields = parser.ReadFields();
                if (readFields != null)
                    values.AddRange(readFields);
                result.Add(values);
            }
        }

        return result;
    }

Answer 5

I know its a bit late but just found a library Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO which has TextFieldParser class to process csv files.

Answer 6

I have written TinyCsvParser for .NET, which is one of the fastest .NET parsers around and highly configurable to parse almost any CSV format.

It is released under MIT License:

• https://github.com/bytefish/TinyCsvParser

You can use NuGet to install it. Run the following command in the Package Manager Console.

PM> Install-Package TinyCsvParser

Usage

Imagine we have list of Persons in a CSV file persons.csv with their first name, last name and birthdate.

FirstName;LastName;BirthDate
Philipp;Wagner;1986/05/12
Max;Musterman;2014/01/02

The corresponding domain model in our system might look like this.

private class Person
{
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    public DateTime BirthDate { get; set; }
}

When using TinyCsvParser you have to define the mapping between the columns in the CSV data and the property in you domain model.

private class CsvPersonMapping : CsvMapping<Person>
{

    public CsvPersonMapping()
        : base()
    {
        MapProperty(0, x => x.FirstName);
        MapProperty(1, x => x.LastName);
        MapProperty(2, x => x.BirthDate);
    }
}

And then we can use the mapping to parse the CSV data with a CsvParser.

namespace TinyCsvParser.Test
{
    [TestFixture]
    public class TinyCsvParserTest
    {
        [Test]
        public void TinyCsvTest()
        {
            CsvParserOptions csvParserOptions = new CsvParserOptions(true, new[] { ';' });
            CsvPersonMapping csvMapper = new CsvPersonMapping();
            CsvParser<Person> csvParser = new CsvParser<Person>(csvParserOptions, csvMapper);

            var result = csvParser
                .ReadFromFile(@"persons.csv", Encoding.ASCII)
                .ToList();

            Assert.AreEqual(2, result.Count);

            Assert.IsTrue(result.All(x => x.IsValid));

            Assert.AreEqual("Philipp", result[0].Result.FirstName);
            Assert.AreEqual("Wagner", result[0].Result.LastName);

            Assert.AreEqual(1986, result[0].Result.BirthDate.Year);
            Assert.AreEqual(5, result[0].Result.BirthDate.Month);
            Assert.AreEqual(12, result[0].Result.BirthDate.Day);

            Assert.AreEqual("Max", result[1].Result.FirstName);
            Assert.AreEqual("Mustermann", result[1].Result.LastName);

            Assert.AreEqual(2014, result[1].Result.BirthDate.Year);
            Assert.AreEqual(1, result[1].Result.BirthDate.Month);
            Assert.AreEqual(1, result[1].Result.BirthDate.Day);
        }
    }
}

User Guide

A full User Guide is available at:

• http://bytefish.github.io/TinyCsvParser/