How do I setup filehelpers with a required, not empty column

Question

I've been looking through filehelpers documentation, but there doesn't seem anything to handle empty values in columns. I need to be able to set a 'non-empty' string attribute on all the columns.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

You can perform any validation you want in the AfterReadRecord event. If you want to continue processing the rest of the file if there is an error, you also need to set the ErrorMode to SaveAndContinue. See below for a working example.

[DelimitedRecord("|")]
public class MyClass
{
    public string Field1;
    public string Field2;
    public string Field3;
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var engine = new FileHelperEngine<MyClass>();
        engine.AfterReadRecord += new FileHelpers.Events.AfterReadHandler<MyClass>(engine_AfterReadRecord);
        engine.ErrorMode = ErrorMode.SaveAndContinue;
        // import a record with an invalid Email
        MyClass[] validRecords = engine.ReadString("Hello||World");
        ErrorInfo[] errors = engine.ErrorManager.Errors;
        Assert.AreEqual(1, engine.TotalRecords); // 1 record was processed
        Assert.AreEqual(0, validRecords.Length); // 0 records were valid
        Assert.AreEqual(1, engine.ErrorManager.ErrorCount); // 1 error was found
        Assert.That(errors[0].ExceptionInfo.Message == "Field2 is invalid");
    }

    static void engine_AfterReadRecord(EngineBase engine, FileHelpers.Events.AfterReadEventArgs<MyClass> e)
    {
        if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(e.Record.Field1))
            throw new Exception("Field1 is invalid");
        if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(e.Record.Field2))
            throw new Exception("Field2 is invalid");
        if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(e.Record.Field3))
            throw new Exception("Field3 is invalid");
    }
}