Question

I am trying to export to CSV, however the problem I am facing is when the data contained within the grid view contains comma’s. Since the a “,”, is used as the delimiter this is causing all sorts of issues within the csv. Below is the code. Any ideas how I can avoid this?

  try
        {
            System.IO.StreamWriter csvFileWriter = new StreamWriter(CsvFpath, false);

            string columnHeaderText = "";

            int countColumn = dataGridViewLogging.ColumnCount - 1;

            if (countColumn >= 0)
            {
                columnHeaderText = dataGridViewLogging.Columns[0].HeaderText;
            }

            for (int i = 1; i <= countColumn; i++)
            {
                columnHeaderText = columnHeaderText + ',' + dataGridViewLogging.Columns[i].HeaderText;
            }


            csvFileWriter.WriteLine(columnHeaderText);

            foreach (DataGridViewRow dataRowObject in dataGridViewLogging.Rows)
            {
                if (!dataRowObject.IsNewRow)
                {
                    string dataFromGrid = "";

                    dataFromGrid = dataRowObject.Cells[0].Value.ToString();

                    for (int i = 1; i <= countColumn; i++)
                    {
                        dataFromGrid = dataFromGrid + ',' + dataRowObject.Cells[i].Value.ToString();

                        csvFileWriter.WriteLine(dataFromGrid);
                    }
                }
            }

Answer 1

Use an escape character, and use a parser that understands how to deal with escapes. You can quickly write an Escape() extension and an Unescape() extension….

public static class ExtentionClass
{
    public static string Escape(this string str)
    {
          return str.Replace("\\","\\\\").Replace(",","\\,");
    }
    public static string Unescape(this string str)
    {
          return str.Replace("\\\\","\\").Replace("\\,",",");
    }
}

now you can change your line to…

dataFromGrid = dataFromGrid + ',' + dataRowObject.Cells[i].Value.ToString().Escape();

But, you are probably wanting to view the output in Excel, then \ doesn’t work… It needs to be double quoted.

...
    public static string Escape(this string str)
    {
        return "\"" + str.Replace("\"","\"\"") + "\"";
    }

You can read more at…
CSV for Excel, Including Both Leading Zeros and Commas