Question

I have the following scenario: I have five fields in my database (name, email, address etc) and then another n fields which are user defined, for instance I can add custom fields such as ID Number, Blood type or anything for that matter and as many of them as I like. I now need to put this into a CSV file. However the problem is that now all of the fields are required therefore I cannot just add the headers to the CSV file and then sequentially add the data as the data might not be in the correct column. What I would need to do is something along the lines of this:

1. Add the predefined headers

2. Add the rest of the custom headers

3. Add the predefined data

4. Add the custom data

My problem is step 4. What I would need is to be able to add the data to a specified column, and I cannot seem to find out how to do this in KBCSV.

What I am currently doing is:

List<string> data = new List<string>();
//Add all predefined data to the data object
foreach (CustomDataItem cdi in CustomData)
{
    data.Add(cdi.Value);
}
writer.WriteDataRecord(data);
//writer is a Kent.Boogaart.KBCsv.CsvWriter

The problem with this approach is that the CustomData length and the csv header length could not match up, meaning I will have values in the wrong columns. Is there any way to add a data value to a specified column?

Answer 1

why not use a dictionary here, and then when writing in csv file check if key is present for the coreect sequence column in dictionary

  Dictionary<string, string> data = new Dictionary<string, string>();
        //Add all predefined data to the data object 
        foreach (CustomDataItem cdi in CustomData)
        {
            data.Add(cdi.ColumnName, cdi.Value);
        }