ToCSV

An extension method that produce a comman separated values of string out of an IEnumerable<T>. This would be useful if you want to automatically generate a CSV out of integer, string, or any other primative data type collection or array. I provided 2 overloads of this method. One of them accepts a separator and the other uses comma "," as default separator. Also I am using another shortcut extension method for foreach loop.

Source

public static void Each<T>(this IEnumerable<T> enumerable, Action<T> action)
{
    foreach (T item in enumerable)
    {
        action(item);
    }
}

public static string ToCSV<T>(this IEnumerable<T> instance, char separator)
{
    StringBuilder csv;
    if (instance != null)
    {
        csv = new StringBuilder();
        instance.Each(value => csv.AppendFormat("{0}{1}", value, separator));
        return csv.ToString(0, csv.Length - 1);
    }
    return null;
}

public static string ToCSV<T>(this IEnumerable<T> instance)
{
    StringBuilder csv;
    if (instance != null)
    {
        csv = new StringBuilder();
        instance.Each(v => csv.AppendFormat("{0},", v));
        return csv.ToString(0, csv.Length - 1);
    }
    return null;
}

Example

[TestMethod]
public void ToCSV_Should_Return_Correct_Comma_Separated_Values()
{
    var values = new[] {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

    string csv = values.ToCSV();

    Assert.AreEqual("1,2,3,4,5",csv);
}

[TestMethod]
public void ToCSV_Should_Return_Correct_Comma_Separated_Values_Using_Specified_Separator()
{
    var values = new[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };

    string csv = values.ToCSV(';');

    Assert.AreEqual("1;2;3;4;5", csv);
}

Author: Muhammad Mosa

Submitted on: 16 dec 2009

Language: C#

Type: System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<T>

Views: 12365