Intro to the CsvHelper Library for C# 

Awesome! Thanks for sharing and congratulations!

I am glad it was helpful.

Thank you!

Glad you like them!

I am glad it was helpful.

I am glad it was helpful.

You are welcome.

You are welcome.

Better late than never, I guess.

Glad to help.

Glad it was helpful!

You are welcome!

You are welcome.

Fantastic! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks!

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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You are welcome.

You are welcome.

Thank you!

Hope you get value out of it.

You are welcome.

If you want the data for other usage, it is fine to use tolist.

You are welcome.

You are welcome.

Excellent!

I am glad it was helpful.

Thanks for sharing!

Here is a video showing you how to turn those on: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-morBKqtqmso.htmlsi=CLUYrvvEaqPpZE_v

There is a major performance issue here. You would need to put all 1,000,000 records into memory in order to filter them. In theory, you could discard the non-matching records so you don't have to keep them in memory, but that's only true if you don't allow the user to backspace in the search field. If they did, you would need to re-process all 1,000,000 rows again. The better option here is to load that data into a database with indexes. It will take a while, but after that, you can easily query the data. That's why databases are so powerful compared to just text files.

I don't believe that you can. I believe that's a limitation of Windows mostly, but I am not positive if there is anything you can do to change how you lock the file.

Yep, it can. CSV files can get quite complex, but this library handles it.

You would need to store the CSV file in a location where you can get it. Probably Azure Storage, since it is cheap and easy to use.

I am not sure what you mean by "update and prevent real time". Can you please explain?

@@IAmTimCorey i mean if is possible notify the changes on the csv somehow

Not using this tool. You would need to tap into the file system events to monitor for file changes, but my guess is that those events won't be as granular as you like. They will tell you the file changed, but not what changed. You will need to read the entire file to figure out what changed by comparing it to what you are storing in memory (or another file) to see what the changes are. If you want change tracking, you might want to use a database.

Yield cannot work with List. To make it return List would be to destroy its efficiency. ToList would put the entire CSV in memory. IEnumerable and Yield allows the helper to only put in memory the row being returned.

You are welcome.

That's something you would need to write the logic for. It isn't something that the tool can do for you.

You should always evaluate your dependencies, but I think the open source movement has actually confused people when it comes to their security. If you take on an open source (or source available) dependency, do you do a thorough code review of it? Or do you just assume because it is open that it is safe? Closed source doesn't mean unsafe. You can still review its outputs and actions to validate that it is doing what you think it should. For instance, the .NET Framework is not open source (.NET is open source). Visual Studio still isn't open source (and has no plans to be). The key isn't so much the availability of the source but in how much effort you put into evaluating the solution and if is something you are comfortable depending on. Long story short, the security concerns don't change based upon the availability of the source.

How to create attributes? No, I don't have a video on that. Copilot was just suggesting I use existing attributes, though.

Thanks for the reply! You have taught me so much you have NO idea. I have made an entire application that I sell now because of you. I can not thank you enough! Yes, attributes. Maybe one day you can make a 10-min short on them as I can not find anything on them. I know there is also a way to use them to import C++ libraries and I also have no clue how to do that.@@IAmTimCorey

Thanks for the suggestion. Please add it to the list on the suggestion site so others can vote on it as well: suggestions.iamtimcorey.com/

Nope, but there are libraries for working with Excel files, though: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-j3S3aI8nMeE.html

@@IAmTimCorey okay would be nice if it just had the option to convert excel to csv

That wouldn't apply here. CSV injection is only relevant when you are opening a CSV file in Excel or other systems where it processes the fields. In C#, you would just see the formulas, etc. as text. You could load, update, and save a CSV file full of CSV injection junk and it wouldn't affect your system in the slightest.

You can use tab-separated format instead of comma-separated using this tool.

The pdf format is very complicated so they all have fairly major drawbacks: price, license, complexity, compatibility, support, quality of output. My opinion is html is a better format for most use cases, although usually people want pdf anyway because it feels familiar.

@Mike-qu6fp it definitely "feels" more familiar given that I've never worked with HTML and the company I work for uses PDF's like they're candy. If I am to print or visualize any files for the users, I'd need to use PDF. Maybe XPS, but that's its own can of worms 😅 I definitely get the issues with PDF, though, for sure.

Not sure, but it sounds like a good opportunity to debug.

@@IAmTimCoreyIt’s really weird if i remove the last line of code Console.Readline(); it will save the records to file, if I include this line it won’t 🤷‍♂️

@@IAmTimCorey Using (var csvOut = new CsvWriter(writer, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)) { csvOut.WriteRecords(outputRecords); } Console.Readline(); Will write the records to file, but it’s not the same as your code so what gives?

You need to hit the Enter key and let the application complete before the file will be closed out properly with my code. With the above code, your using closes out before the application pauses to listen for user input.

I don't think it is "missing" it. They purposefully chose not to include one because a CSV is not a database and cannot be treated like one. For instance, if you wanted to sort the data, you would need to load the whole CSV into memory. If you wanted to filter the data, you would need to load the whole CSV into memory. If you wanted to update a row, you would need to load the whole CSV into memory. That seems fine if you are loading 10,000 rows or less but it get messy when you try to load 1,000,000 rows. If you want database-like structure and capabilities, load the CSV into SQLite or another actual database. Then you can do whatever you want with the data without keeping the entire file in memory for the life of your application.

1. That’s how demos work. 2. Yes, it can handle the oddities of CSV files. 3. Trust NuGet packages? That’s how C# works. Even Microsoft uses them for their core products. For open source products (like this one), you can inspect the source yourself. For closed source, you can evaluate the company that supports them. It is no different than trusting any other software or app.

I find that Excel is more useful to view CSV files rather than creating them in the first place. Usually if you are creating something in Excel, it is an XLSX file.

Thanks for sharing!

You can look at the code to see how it is doing it, but it could absolutely use reflection and still be incredibly performant. Don’t get so locked into a technology that you fail to consider the alternatives.

Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, CSV is such a simple format that you might not even think of using a library at first, but that would be a mistake.

In this tutorial, I created a CSV file using the library. I also read a CSV file into memory. I'm not sure what else you were looking for from an intro tutorial.