How to comment or ignore a line in the txt file using FileHelpers

Question

IgnoreFirst(int) or IgnoreLast(int) only ignore a fixed number of lines as header or footer. But I like to ignore or comment a specific line(s) in the txt/csv file. For example like below (ignore some paragraphs or a specific line in txt/csv):

############# This is a comment ##########
/* Some comment paragraph  
some more comments
last line of comment */
1,Foo,FooItem1
2,Foo,FooItem2
3,Goo,GooItem3
#4,Doo,DooItem4 <-- ignore. 
5,Eoo,EooItem5

I have read about BeforeReadRecord and SkipThisRecord that could potentially resolve this problem, but the documentation is as simple as the image, and has no explanation nor supply an example.

Answer 1

You'll have to use something like this to register the event handler:

FileHelperEngine engine = new FileHelperEngine(typeof(Orders)); 
// set the event here
engine.BeforeReadRecord += new BeforeReadRecordHandler(BeforeEvent); 

and then in the handler, you can check for specific conditions to skip a record:

private void BeforeEvent(EngineBase engine, BeforeReadRecordEventArgs e)
{
    // skip any bad lines
    if (e.RecordLine.StartsWith("#") || e.RecordLine.StartsWith(" "))
        e.SkipThisRecord = true;
}

May be you can just check if it starts with an integer and skip if it doesn't.

EDIT: You can also use the INotifyRead Interface inside the record like this:

public class OrdersFixed
    :INotifyRead
{
    //...

    public void BeforeRead(BeforeReadEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.RecordLine.StartsWith(" ") ||
           e.RecordLine.StartsWith("-"))
            e.SkipThisRecord = true;
    }

}