manipulating files with ado.net

[Christopher Nigro]

Hi,

My previous post still holds true: it's not the extention of the file that is problematic, but the structure of the contents. If the real CSV file is formatted the same as the text file example, you cannot query it with ADO.NET: the data is not tabular. You will have to read the file with a StreamReader or something and manipulate it programatically .

[dougancil]

Chris,

Are there any good tutorials on using StreamReader or how to use it properly? I've googled it and can't really find any good information.

Thank you,

Doug

[Christopher Nigro]

A StreamReader isn't all that complicated. For anything in .NET, I usually go right to the class definition first:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.streamreader_members.aspx

If you look at the available methods, you are really only ever going to be interested in the read methods:
Read()
Read(Char[], Int32, Int32)
ReadBlock
ReadLine
ReadToEnd

Each one of those provides an example. What, in particular, is not clear to you?

[dougancil]

Chris,

Also when looking at the .csv file, it does appear that it's formatted correctly for a .csv file, but the data just replicates in a few places. I just want to make sure that I'm approaching this problem the best way possible.
Thank you

Doug

[Christopher Nigro]

Chris,

Also when looking at the .csv file, it does appear that it's formatted correctly for a .csv file, but the data just replicates in a few places. I just want to make sure that I'm approaching this problem the best way possible.
Thank you

Doug

Can you post a few lines of the CSV file?

[Christopher Nigro]

Yup, you have to forget about ADO.NET for this and use the StreamReader get it into a string array and then parse that array for what you are looking for. That really isn't a CSV file that you have there.

[dougancil]

So then the best place to call the StreamReader would be after the file was uploaded but before the sql query was ran and I could write that as a private function, correct?

[Christopher Nigro]

Yes, that sounds like a plan.

[dougancil]

Ok so one other question is, I can still use regex once I've stored the datafile as a string correct? and just parse my information out of the string?

[Christopher Nigro]

Sure: regular expressions operate on strings and you have string data.

[dougancil]

Chris,

I had an idea ... what about making this a datatable instead, since I have to parse out the information that I don't need. Because the file will be virtually the same every time, including the fields, I could set this up one time, parse out the data that I don't need and post the updated information to the SQL database. Will that work?

[Christopher Nigro]

Chris,

I had an idea ... what about making this a datatable instead, since I have to parse out the information that I don't need. Because the file will be virtually the same every time, including the fields, I could set this up one time, parse out the data that I don't need and post the updated information to the SQL database. Will that work?

Hi Doug,

Sure, that's one way to go about it.