CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linqlistcsvgenerics
johnny 5
johnny 5

Reputation: 20995

Create a CSV of class members from a list<T>

I have a List of a Simple Struct that contains int's and strings.

Struct:

public struct ErrorType
    {
        public int RowNumber;
        public int ColumnNumber;
        public string ErrorMessage;
    }

On of My methods return A list of these structs. I want to convert each member in the list to its string form and separate it by a comma so that List is now an Array of strings. I could write a function to do this manually but I'd perfer to use linq to have a cleaner solution.

Having the array of strings I'll write it to a file using 

 string path = @"c:\temp\MyTest.txt";

    // This text is added only once to the file. 
    if (!File.Exists(path))
    {
        // Create a file to write to.

        List<ErrorType> ErrorTypesList = GetErrors();

        //do some work to iterate over the members and do a string.join after 
        string[] ErrorListArray = ErrorTypesList.foreach( e => { });
        File.WriteAllLines(path, createText);
    }

does anyone have suggestions on how to fill in the foreach so that it returns each members in its ToString form followed by a comma?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 60

Answers (2)

Matthew Haugen
Matthew Haugen

Reputation: 13286

The only way you'd be able to use LINQ for property iteration is if you're using reflection, and you shouldn't do that unless you absolutely have to (which it really doesn't look like you do).

The best you can do, though, still isn't too bad.

var rows = ErrorTypesList
           .Select(c => "\"" + string.Join("\",\"", c.RowNumber, c.ColumnNumber, c.ErrorMessage) + "\"");

File.WriteAllLines(path, rows);

I took the liberty of putting fields in quotes as well, you may or may not want that, but it's easy to fix that code to do what you do want. You might also want to add in some escape logic, pending what sorts of contents c.ErrorMessage might have.

You could also use string.Format if you're more comfortable with that, but it doesn't really make a difference here.

var rows = ErrorTypesList
           .Select(c => string.Format("\"{0}\", \"{1}\", \"{2}\"", c.RowNumber, c.ColumnNumber, c.ErrorMessage));

Upvotes: 1

Selman Gen&#231;
Selman Gen&#231;

Reputation: 101701

It seems you want something like this:

string[] ErrorListArray = ErrorTypesList
     .Select(e => string.Join(",", e.RowNumber, e.ColumnNumber, e.ErrorMessage))
     .ToArray();

Upvotes: 1

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