CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#string-parsing
Tarik
Tarik

Reputation: 81711

An easy way to parse a string to Key Value Pairs

Lets say I have class definition like this (fairly simple):

class Person
{
  public string Balance;
  public string Escrow;
  public string Acc;
  // .. and more 

}

and I need to parse this string into the class above:

BALANCE:      746.67     ESCROW PAYMENT:      271.22     LAST ACT:05/03/12
ACC: 10                   YTD DIVIDENDS:          .27   ENTRY DATE:12/20/10

The string comes in this weird format.

I am thinking to read each line one by one and parse its content but I like to learn a better way maybe. At least 2 brains are stronger than one brain.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2056

Answers (2)

Tim S
Tim S

Reputation: 707

You could use a regular expression to extract the value for each property from the source string like so:

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
...
Regex balanceRegex = new Regex("(?<=BALANCE:\\s*)[^\\s]+");
string balance = balanceRegex.Match(source).Value;

This could be wrapped up in a function to search for any named property like this: 

private static string GetProperty(string source, string propertyName)
{
    string pattern = String.Format("(?<={0}:\\s*)[^\\s]+", propertyName);
    Regex regex = new Regex(pattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
    return regex.Match(source).Value;
}

Then you could populate a Person object like this:

Person person = new Person
{
    Balance = GetProperty(source, "Balance"),
    Escrow = GetProperty(source, "Escrow Payment"),
    Acc = GetProperty(source, "Acc")
};

You might need to tweak the regex if, for example, you have whitespace inside your property values e.g. ACCOUNT NAME: MR SMITH

The regex approach is quite flexible as it will work even if the order of the properties or the amount of whitespace changed.

Upvotes: 1

JaredPar
JaredPar

Reputation: 754595

If the string is always in that format then you should be able to just split on a ":" character and index into the array. 

public Person ParsePerson(string line1, string line2) 
{
  string[] fields1 = line1.Split(new char[] {':', ' '}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
  string[] fields2 = line2.Split(new char[] {':', ' '}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
  return new Person() {
    Balance = fields1[1],
    Escrow = fields1[3],
    Acc = fields1[1]
  };
}

Upvotes: 1

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