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;
    }