Importing CSV data into C# classes

Question

I know how to read and display a line of a .csv file. Now I would like to parse that file, store its contents in arrays, and use those arrays as values for some classes I created.

I'd like to learn how though.

Here is an example:

basketball,2011/01/28,Rockets,Blazers,98,99
baseball,2011/08/22,Yankees,Redsox,4,3

As you can see, each field is separated by commas. I've created the Basketball.cs and Baseball classes which is an extension of the Sport.cs class, which has the fields:

private string sport;
private string date;
private string team1;
private string team2;
private string score;

I understand that this is simplistic, and that there's better ways of storing this info, i.e. creating classes for each team, making the date a DateType datatype, and more of the same but I'd like to know how to input this information into the classes.

I'm assuming this has something to do with getters and setters... I've also read of dictionaries and collections, but I'd like to start simple by storing them all in arrays... (If that makes sense... Feel free to correct me).

Here is what I have so far. All it does is read the csv and parrot out its contents on the Console:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;

namespace Assign01
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string line;
            FileStream aFile = new FileStream("../../sportsResults.csv", FileMode.Open);
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(aFile);

            // read data in line by line
            while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(line);
                line = sr.ReadLine();
            }
            sr.Close();
        }
    }
}

Help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Creating array to keep the information is not a very good idea, as you don't know how many lines will be in the input file. What would be the initial size of your Array ?? I would advise you to use for example a Generic List to keep the information (E.g. List<>).

You can also add a constructor to your Sport Class that accepts an array (result of the split action as described in above answer.

Additionally you can provide some conversions in the setters

public class Sport
{
    private string sport;
    private DateTime date;
    private string team1;
    private string team2;
    private string score;

    public Sport(string[] csvArray)
    {
        this.sport = csvArray[0];
        this.team1 = csvArray[2];
        this.team2 = csvArray[3];
        this.date = Convert.ToDateTime(csvArray[1]);
        this.score = String.Format("{0}-{1}", csvArray[4], csvArray[5]);
    }

Just for simplicity I wrote the Convert Method, but keep in mind this is also not a very safe way unless you are sure that the DateField always contains valid Dates and Score always contains Numeric Values. You can try other safer methods like tryParse or some Exception Handling.

I all honesty, it must add that the above solution is simple (as requested), on a conceptual level I would advise against it. Putting the mapping logic between attributes and the csv-file in the class will make the sports-class too dependent on the file itself and thus less reusable. Any later changes in the file structure should then be reflected in your class and can often be overlooked. Therefore it would be wiser to put your “mapping & conversion” logic in the main program and keep your class a clean as possible

(Changed your "Score" issue by formatting it as 2 strings combined with a hyphen)