Question

I am writing a program that opens up one file at a time, parses it, and outputs the parsed data into a new .txt document that is named based off of the file coming in. There are over 50 files that are going to be read and parsed.

So if the opened file was named something like this: STACK-OVERFLOW-125663-D2.txt, the output file would be something like this 125663-D2.txt.

Each time a file is read, it is parsed for their part numbers. Each file will contain lines similar to this (The 8th seperated comma values (ie, 119082, 119083, 119040, 119085, 119084) are the part number values.):

"00003",6,"D","C20",-70.10,42.06,90.00,"119082",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"001"
"00004",6,"D","C21",-67.91,42.06,90.00,"119082",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"001"
"00005",13,"D","C23",-66.91,59.07,180.00,"119083",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"002"
"00006",13,"D","R10",-77.32,66.88,90.00,"119040",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"003"
"00007",13,"D","L3",-77.64,77.48,90.00,"119085",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"004"
"00008",20,"D","D1",-62.91,103.77,0.00,"119084",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"005"
"00009",21,"D","D1",-25.83,103.77,0.00,"119084",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"005"
"00010",14,"D","L3",-40.56,77.48,90.00,"119085",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"004"
"00011",14,"D","R10",-40.24,66.88,90.00,"119040",0,1,2,0,0,"",0,"003"

Now what I need to do is check another .txt file.. let’s say it is called “DATABASE.txt” to see if these part number exist in there already. This data base file will look something like this:

119082:    125663-D2, 123456-A1,
119083:    125663-D2,
119085:    125663-D2, 123456-A1, 987654321-Z11234, 1111111-B50

So, in the DATABASE.txt file and the file opened above, I want to check all of the part numbers from the opened file and see if they exist in the data base.

• If the part does exist, I want to concat the filename (the output file) to the end of the line that the part number was found on.

• If the part does not exist, I want to add the part to the file and sort the file using list.Sort().

I am unsure on how to do this, can anyone help?

---

Here is some of my code so far:

List<string> partNumberLines = new List<string>();
string file = openFile.FileName;
string splitFile = file.Split('\\');
string[] savedName = splitFile[splitFile.Length - 1].Split('.');
string[] lineNumber = savedNamed[2].Split('-');
string fileName = savedNamed[1] + "-" + lineNumber[0] + ".txt";

foreach (string line in fileList)
{
    string[] splitLine = line.Split('\n');
    for (int i = 0; i < splitLine.Length; i++)
    {
        string tempSplit = splitLine[i].Split(',');  // splits each line by commas
        if (tempSplit.Length.Equals(16))
        {
            tempSplit[7] = tempSplit[7].TrimStart('"');  //trims the quotes from the part numbers
            tempSplit[7] = tempSplit[7].TrimEnd('"');
        }
    }
}
partNumberLines = partNumberLines.Distinct().ToList();  //gets rid of duplicate partnumbers in one file.

---

So my code is getting all of the part numbers and the name of the file.. I just do not know how to open up an existing file (and if it does not exist, create it) and search through the file and look for matches in the List: partNumberLines. And if it matches, concat the file name to the current line. If it does not match, create a new line and add the part number and file name and then sort the file numerically by part number.

Can anyone help me figure this out?

Answer 1

Hope you haven’t given up. Here’s a sample class. I’ve completed it from my last post. Save your database data above to database.txt and your parts data to parts.txt and modify the paths to see how it works. Hope it helps you. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

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

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        private class DataBaseRecord
        {
            public string PartNumber { get; set; }
            public List<string> FileNames { get; set; }
            public DataBaseRecord(string _PartNumber, List<string> _FileNames)
            {
                PartNumber = _PartNumber;
                FileNames = _FileNames;
            }
        }

        private class DataBase
        {
            public string databaseFile { get; set; }
            List<DataBaseRecord> records;
            public DataBase(string _databaseFile)
            {
                databaseFile = _databaseFile;
                records = new List<DataBaseRecord>();
            }
            public void AddRecord(string partNumber, string fileName)
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(partNumber))
                    return;

                if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(fileName))
                    return;

                bool exists = records.Count(x => x.PartNumber == partNumber) > 0;
                if (!exists)
                {
                    records.Add(new DataBaseRecord(partNumber, new List<string>() { fileName }));
                }
                else
                {
                    var record = from x in records where x.PartNumber == partNumber select x;
                    foreach (DataBaseRecord dbr in record)
                    {
                        exists = dbr.FileNames.Count(x => x == fileName) > 0;
                        if (!exists)
                            dbr.FileNames.Add(fileName);
                    }
                }
            }
            public void Read()
            {
                // read all database records into data structure
                using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(databaseFile))
                {
                    while (!sr.EndOfStream)
                    {
                        string line = sr.ReadLine();
                        string partNumber = line.Split(':')[0].Trim();
                        if (partNumber[0] == '\"')
                            partNumber = partNumber.Substring(1, partNumber.Length - 2);
                        string[] files = line.Split(new string[]{":"}, StringSplitOptions.None)[1].Split(new string[]{","}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
                        List<string> fileNumbers = new List<string>();
                        foreach (String file in files)
                        {
                            if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(file))
                            {
                                fileNumbers.Add(file.Trim());
                            }
                        }
                        records.Add(new DataBaseRecord(partNumber, fileNumbers));
                    }
                }
            }
            public void Write()
            {
                // write out database using the records
                var sortedRecords = from x in records orderby x.PartNumber select x;
                using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(databaseFile))
                {
                    foreach (DataBaseRecord record in sortedRecords)
                    {
                        string line = record.PartNumber + ": ";
                        for (int index = 0; index < record.FileNames.Count; index++)
                        {
                            line += record.FileNames[index];
                            if (index < record.FileNames.Count - 1)
                                line += ", ";
                        }
                        sw.WriteLine(line);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // replace with name of your database
            DataBase db = new DataBase(@"C:\Users\jondoe\Desktop\DataBase.txt");
            db.Read();

            // replace with list of your parts files
            string[] partsFiles = new string[] { @"C:\Users\jondoe\Desktop\parts.txt" };
            foreach (string partsFile in partsFiles)
            {
                using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(partsFile))
                {
                    while (!sr.EndOfStream)
                    {
                        string line = sr.ReadLine();
                        string partNumber = line.Split(new string[] { "," }, StringSplitOptions.None)[7];
                        if (partNumber[0] == '\"')
                            partNumber = partNumber.Substring(1, partNumber.Length - 2);
                        db.AddRecord(partNumber, Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(partsFile));
                    }
                }                
            }

            db.Write();
        }
    }
}

Edit

If you want a static database and you want to allow the user to choose a parts file, then you could do this in a button click event:

private void btnOpenFile_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    DataBase db = new DataBase(@"C:\Users\JonDoe\Desktop\DataBase.txt");
    db.Read();

    using (OpenFileDialog ofd = new OpenFileDialog())
    {
        if (ofd.ShowDialog() == System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK)
        {
            using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ofd.FileName))
            {
                while (!sr.EndOfStream)
                {
                    string line = sr.ReadLine();
                    string partNumber = line.Split(new string[] { "," }, StringSplitOptions.None)[7];
                    if (partNumber[0] == '\"')
                        partNumber = partNumber.Substring(1, partNumber.Length - 2);
                    db.AddRecord(partNumber, Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(ofd.FileName));
                }
            }
            db.Write();
        }
    }
}