Question

How can I parse the following string of name-value pair in C#:

string studentDetail = "StudentId=J1123,FirstName=Jack,LastName=Welch,StudentId=k3342,FirstName=Steve,LastName=Smith"

The purpose of parsing this array is to insert values in DB using Linq to SQL:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult SaveStudent(string studentDetail)
{
    DataContext db = new DataContext();         

    Student student = new Student();
    {
        student.StudentID = //StudentID
        student.FirstName = //FirstName
        student.LastName = //LastName
    };

    db.Student.InsertOnSubmit(student);
    db.SubmitChanges();

    return View();
}

What is the best way of approaching this?

Answer 1

You can split on the comma, then on the equals sign. I put the data into a dictionary for easy access.

string input = "StudentId=J1123,FirstName=Jack,LastName=Welch";

Dictionary<string,string> keyValuePairs = input.Split(',')
  .Select(value => value.Split('='))
  .ToDictionary(pair => pair[0], pair => pair[1]);

string studentId = keyValuePairs["StudentId"];

Note that this isn’t validating the input at all to ensure that there are no commas in values, no keys without values, missing keys, etc.