CSV string handling

Question

Typical way of creating a CSV string (pseudocode):

1. Create a CSV container object (like a StringBuilder in C#).
2. Loop through the strings you want to ad

Answer 1

I wrote a small class for this in case someone else finds it useful...

public class clsCSVBuilder
{
    protected int _CurrentIndex = -1;
    protected List _Headers = new List();
    protected List> _Records = new List>();
    protected const string SEPERATOR = ",";

    public clsCSVBuilder() { }

    public void CreateRow()
    {
        _Records.Add(new List());
        _CurrentIndex++;
    }

    protected string _EscapeString(string str)
    {
        return string.Format("\"{0}\"", str.Replace("\"", "\"\"")
                                            .Replace("\r\n", " ")
                                            .Replace("\n", " ")
                                            .Replace("\r", " "));
    }

    protected void _AddRawString(string item)
    {
        _Records[_CurrentIndex].Add(item);
    }

    public void AddHeader(string name)
    {
        _Headers.Add(_EscapeString(name));
    }

    public void AddRowItem(string item)
    {
        _AddRawString(_EscapeString(item));
    }

    public void AddRowItem(int item)
    {
        _AddRawString(item.ToString());
    }

    public void AddRowItem(double item)
    {
        _AddRawString(item.ToString());
    }

    public void AddRowItem(DateTime date)
    {
        AddRowItem(date.ToShortDateString());
    }

    public static string GenerateTempCSVPath()
    {
        return Path.Combine(Path.GetTempPath(), Guid.NewGuid().ToString().ToLower().Replace("-", "") + ".csv");
    }

    protected string _GenerateCSV()
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        if (_Headers.Count > 0)
        {
            sb.AppendLine(string.Join(SEPERATOR, _Headers.ToArray()));
        }

        foreach (List row in _Records)
        {
            sb.AppendLine(string.Join(SEPERATOR, row.ToArray()));
        }

        return sb.ToString();
    }

    public void SaveAs(string path)
    {
        using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(path))
        {
            sw.Write(_GenerateCSV());
        }
    }
}