Importing CSV data into C# classes

Question

I know how to read and display a line of a .csv file. Now I would like to parse that file, store its contents in arrays, and use those arrays as values for some classes I cr

Answer 1

For a resilient, fast, and low effort solution, you can use CsvHelper which handles a lot of code and edge cases and has pretty good documentation

First, install the CsvHelper package on Nuget

a) CSV with Headers

If your csv has headers like this:

sport,date,team 1,team 2,score 1,score 2
basketball,2011/01/28,Rockets,Blazers,98,99
baseball,2011/08/22,Yankees,Redsox,4,3

You can add attributes to your class to map the field names to your class names like this:

public class SportStats
{
    [Name("sport")]
    public string Sport { get; set; }
    [Name("date")]
    public DateTime Date { get; set; }
    [Name("team 1")]
    public string TeamOne { get; set; }
    [Name("team 2")]
    public string TeamTwo { get; set; }
    [Name("score 1")]
    public int ScoreOne { get; set; }
    [Name("score 2")]
    public int ScoreTwo { get; set; }
}

And then invoke like this:

List records;

using (var reader = new StreamReader(@".\stats.csv"))
using (var csv = new CsvReader(reader))
{
    records = csv.GetRecords().ToList();
}

b) CSV without Headers

If your csv doesn't have headers like this:

basketball,2011/01/28,Rockets,Blazers,98,99
baseball,2011/08/22,Yankees,Redsox,4,3

You can add attributes to your class and map to the CSV ordinally by position like this:

public class SportStats
{
    [Index(0)]
    public string Sport { get; set; }
    [Index(1)]
    public DateTime Date { get; set; }
    [Index(2)]
    public string TeamOne { get; set; }
    [Index(3)]
    public string TeamTwo { get; set; }
    [Index(4)]
    public int ScoreOne { get; set; }
    [Index(5)]
    public int ScoreTwo { get; set; }
}

And then invoke like this:

List records;

using (var reader = new StreamReader(@".\stats.csv"))
using (var csv = new CsvReader(reader))
{
    csv.Configuration.HasHeaderRecord = false;
    records = csv.GetRecords().ToList();
}

Further Reading

• Reading CSV file and storing values into an array (295