CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#asp.netstringlist
shockemc
shockemc

Reputation: 85

Define Characters to Display in List<String>

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I'm trying to organize information in a text file and I thought a good way to do it would be to define each line of the file as its own List Item and then cut up each List entry by commas but I can't figure out how to parse or split the list items to use them later on.

This reads the file and returns a list with five entries:

    public static List<String> ImportVehicalList() {

        List<String> vehiclesAndOptions = new List<string>();
        StreamReader sr = null;

        try { // Attempt to open text file

            String filePath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/srcDocuments/modelsAndOptions.txt");
            String modelOptions; // Line to be added to List

            using (sr = new StreamReader(filePath)) {

                while ((modelOptions = sr.ReadLine()) != null) {

                    // Tried to split it before creating the list but
                    // this did not work.
                    //modelOptions.Split(',').ToList<String>();
                    vehiclesAndOptions.Add(modelOptions);

                }

            }
        }
        catch (Exception e) { } // File Not Found Catch
        finally { try { sr.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { } } // Cannot close the reader

        return vehiclesAndOptions;
    }

This is how I'm loading the list into an asp.net drop-down list. I was hoping to split the list here so that only the model shows in the drop down. 

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {

    List<String> vehicalList = new List<string>();
    vehicalList = Utils.ImportVehicalList();

    foreach (String i in vehicalList) {

        ddlModels.Items.Add(i);
        //Response.Write(i);

    }

    // Binds the list to drop down menu ddlModels
    //ddlModels.DataSource = vehicalList;
    //ddlModels.DataBind();


}

There are a lot of post on here for parsing information and truthfully, I'm not very proficient with it and I have yet to find a solution that I am able to implement using my code. Here are some of the sources I've looked into:

How to split() a delimited string to a List<String>

https://www.dotnetperls.com/convert-list-string

Is it even possible to parse a list item on a comma or can this only be done by splitting a string first and then adding each item to a list?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 87

Answers (1)

Faheem
Faheem

Reputation: 1453

I think what you are looking for is again string.split, when you are looping. So from what I understand, each line contains a model with attributes like so: Model, attribute, attribute, attribute

And you want for each model a list of attributes. In your case this becomes:

string[] arr = vehicleAndoptions.Split(',');
string model = arr[0];// or arr.First(); if you prefer linq
List<string> attributes = arr.Skip(1).AsList<string>();

Upvotes: 1

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