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 use CSVHelper - it's a great open-source library that lets you generate compliant CSV streams one element at a time or custom-map your classes:

public string ReturnAsCSV(ContactList contactList)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    using (StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter(sb))
    {
        using (var csvWriter = new CsvHelper.CsvWriter(stringWriter))
        {
            csvWriter.Configuration.HasHeaderRecord = false;
            foreach (Contact c in contactList)
            {
                csvWriter.WriteField(c.Name);
            }
        }
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}

or if you map then something like this: csvWriter.WriteRecords(contactList);