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

For those of you wishing not to use an external library, and prefer not to use OleDB, see the example below. Everything I found was either OleDB, external library, or simply splitting based on a comma! For my case OleDB was not working so I wanted something different.

I found an article by MarkJ that referenced the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser method as seen here. The article is written in VB and doesn't return a datatable, so see my example below.

public static DataTable LoadCSV(string path, bool hasHeader)
    {
        DataTable dt = new DataTable();

        using (var MyReader = new Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser(path))
        {
            MyReader.TextFieldType = Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FieldType.Delimited;
            MyReader.Delimiters = new String[] { "," };

            string[] currentRow;

            //'Loop through all of the fields in the file.  
            //'If any lines are corrupt, report an error and continue parsing.  
            bool firstRow = true;
            while (!MyReader.EndOfData)
            {
                try
                {
                    currentRow = MyReader.ReadFields();

                    //Add the header columns
                    if (hasHeader && firstRow)
                    {
                        foreach (string c in currentRow)
                        {
                            dt.Columns.Add(c, typeof(string));
                        }

                        firstRow = false;
                        continue;
                    }

                    //Create a new row
                    DataRow dr = dt.NewRow();
                    dt.Rows.Add(dr);

                    //Loop thru the current line and fill the data out
                    for(int c = 0; c < currentRow.Count(); c++)
                    {
                        dr[c] = currentRow[c];
                    }
                }
                catch (Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.MalformedLineException ex)
                {
                    //Handle the exception here
                }
            }
        }

        return dt;
    }

Answer 2

You can achieve it by using Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser dll in C#

static void Main()
        {
            string csv_file_path=@"C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\test.csv";

            DataTable csvData = GetDataTabletFromCSVFile(csv_file_path);

            Console.WriteLine("Rows count:" + csvData.Rows.Count);

            Console.ReadLine();
        }


private static DataTable GetDataTabletFromCSVFile(string csv_file_path)
        {
            DataTable csvData = new DataTable();

            try
            {

            using(TextFieldParser csvReader = new TextFieldParser(csv_file_path))
                {
                    csvReader.SetDelimiters(new string[] { "," });
                    csvReader.HasFieldsEnclosedInQuotes = true;
                    string[] colFields = csvReader.ReadFields();
                    foreach (string column in colFields)
                    {
                        DataColumn datecolumn = new DataColumn(column);
                        datecolumn.AllowDBNull = true;
                        csvData.Columns.Add(datecolumn);
                    }

                    while (!csvReader.EndOfData)
                    {
                        string[] fieldData = csvReader.ReadFields();
                        //Making empty value as null
                        for (int i = 0; i < fieldData.Length; i++)
                        {
                            if (fieldData[i] == "")
                            {
                                fieldData[i] = null;
                            }
                        }
                        csvData.Rows.Add(fieldData);
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
            }
            return csvData;
        }

Answer 3

We always used to use the Jet.OLEDB driver, until we started going to 64 bit applications. Microsoft has not and will not release a 64 bit Jet driver. Here's a simple solution we came up with that uses File.ReadAllLines and String.Split to read and parse the CSV file and manually load a DataTable. As noted above, it DOES NOT handle the situation where one of the column values contains a comma. We use this mostly for reading custom configuration files - the nice part about using CSV files is that we can edit them in Excel.

string CSVFilePathName = @"C:\test.csv";
string[] Lines = File.ReadAllLines(CSVFilePathName);
string[] Fields;
Fields = Lines[0].Split(new char[] { ',' });
int Cols = Fields.GetLength(0);
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
//1st row must be column names; force lower case to ensure matching later on.
for (int i = 0; i < Cols; i++)
    dt.Columns.Add(Fields[i].ToLower(), typeof(string));
DataRow Row;
for (int i = 1; i < Lines.GetLength(0); i++)
{
    Fields = Lines[i].Split(new char[] { ',' });
    Row = dt.NewRow();
    for (int f = 0; f < Cols; f++)
        Row[f] = Fields[f];
    dt.Rows.Add(Row);
}

Answer 4

Can't resist adding my own spin to this. This is so much better and more compact than what I've used in the past.

This solution:

• Does not depend on a database driver or 3rd party library.
• Will not fail on duplicate column names
• Handles commas in the data
• Handles any delimiter, not just commas (although that is the default)

Here's what I came up with:

  Public Function ToDataTable(FileName As String, Optional Delimiter As String = ",") As DataTable
    ToDataTable = New DataTable
    Using TextFieldParser As New Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser(FileName) With
      {.HasFieldsEnclosedInQuotes = True, .TextFieldType = Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FieldType.Delimited, .TrimWhiteSpace = True}
      With TextFieldParser
        .SetDelimiters({Delimiter})
        .ReadFields.ToList.Unique.ForEach(Sub(x) ToDataTable.Columns.Add(x))
        ToDataTable.Columns.Cast(Of DataColumn).ToList.ForEach(Sub(x) x.AllowDBNull = True)
        Do Until .EndOfData
          ToDataTable.Rows.Add(.ReadFields.Select(Function(x) Text.BlankToNothing(x)).ToArray)
        Loop
      End With
    End Using
  End Function

It depends on an extension method (Unique) to handle duplicate column names to be found as my answer in How to append unique numbers to a list of strings

And here's the BlankToNothing helper function:

  Public Function BlankToNothing(ByVal Value As String) As Object 
    If String.IsNullOrEmpty(Value) Then Return Nothing
    Return Value
  End Function

Answer 5

I have decided to use Sebastien Lorion's Csv Reader.

Jay Riggs suggestion is a great solution also, but I just didn't need all of the features that that Andrew Rissing's Generic Parser provides.

UPDATE 10/25/2010

After using Sebastien Lorion's Csv Reader in my project for nearly a year and a half, I have found that it throws exceptions when parsing some csv files that I believe to be well formed.

So, I did switch to Andrew Rissing's Generic Parser and it seems to be doing much better.

UPDATE 9/22/2014

These days, I mostly use this extension method to read delimited text:

https://github.com/Core-Techs/Common/blob/master/CoreTechs.Common/Text/DelimitedTextExtensions.cs#L22

https://www.nuget.org/packages/CoreTechs.Common/

UPDATE 2/20/2015

Example:

var csv = @"Name, Age
Ronnie, 30
Mark, 40
Ace, 50";

TextReader reader = new StringReader(csv);
var table = new DataTable();
using(var it = reader.ReadCsvWithHeader().GetEnumerator())
{

    if (!it.MoveNext()) return;

    foreach (var k in it.Current.Keys)
        table.Columns.Add(k);

    do
    {
        var row = table.NewRow();
        foreach (var k in it.Current.Keys)
            row[k] = it.Current[k];

        table.Rows.Add(row);

    } while (it.MoveNext());
}

Answer 6

this is the code i use it but your apps must run with net version 3.5

private void txtRead_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
           // var filename = @"d:\shiptest.txt";

            openFileDialog1.InitialDirectory = "d:\\";
            openFileDialog1.Filter = "txt files (*.txt)|*.txt|All files (*.*)|*.*";
            DialogResult result = openFileDialog1.ShowDialog();
            if (result == DialogResult.OK)
            {
                if (openFileDialog1.FileName != "")
                {
                    var reader = ReadAsLines(openFileDialog1.FileName);

                    var data = new DataTable();

                    //this assume the first record is filled with the column names
                    var headers = reader.First().Split(',');
                    foreach (var header in headers)
                    {
                        data.Columns.Add(header);
                    }

                    var records = reader.Skip(1);
                    foreach (var record in records)
                    {
                        data.Rows.Add(record.Split(','));
                    }

                    dgList.DataSource = data;
                }
            }
        }

        static IEnumerable<string> ReadAsLines(string filename)
        {
            using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(filename))
                while (!reader.EndOfStream)
                    yield return reader.ReadLine();
        }