Question

I’m performing a “while” loop in C#, this is going through some records being pulled from a DB. What’s the best way to detect/find the last record on the loop? Is this possible?

Here is my code:

    while (sdr.Read())
    {
        //Pull each line from DB
        the_title = sdr["the_title"].ToString();
        the_cats = sdr["the_category"].ToString();
        the_tags = sdr["the_tags"].ToString();
        the_date = sdr["the_date"].ToString();

        //Start file creation
        writer.WriteLine("[");
        writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_title + "\", ");
        writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_cats + "\", ");
        writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_tags + "\", ");
        writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_date + "\", ");
        writer.WriteLine("\"<a href=\\\"#\\\" class=\\\"sepV_a\\\" title=\\\"Edit\\\"><i class=\\\"icon-pencil\\\"></i></a>\"");

        writer.WriteLine("],");

    }
    writer.WriteLine("]");
    writer.WriteLine("}");
    writer.Close();

The problem I’m having is with the last line of code “writer.WriteLine(“],”);” I need to remove that comma on the last record being pulled from the DB.

thank you

Answer 1

You can’t know the last (up until you’ve reached/passed it), but you can know the first. You can modify your code as:

bool isFirst = true;
while (sdr.Read())
{
    if (isFirst) isFirst = false;
    else writer.WriteLine(",");

    //Pull each line from DB
    the_title = sdr["the_title"].ToString();
    the_cats = sdr["the_category"].ToString();
    the_tags = sdr["the_tags"].ToString();
    the_date = sdr["the_date"].ToString();

    //Start file creation
    writer.WriteLine("[");
    writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_title + "\", ");
    writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_cats + "\", ");
    writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_tags + "\", ");
    writer.WriteLine("\"" + the_date + "\", ");
    writer.WriteLine("\"<a href=\\\"#\\\" class=\\\"sepV_a\\\" title=\\\"Edit\\\"><i class=\\\"icon-pencil\\\"></i></a>\"");

    writer.Write("]");
}
writer.WriteLine();

Else, to avoid the check in every instance of the loop, you could use:

var sb = new StringBuilder();
while (sdr.Read())
{
    //Pull each line from DB
    the_title = sdr["the_title"].ToString();
    the_cats = sdr["the_category"].ToString();
    the_tags = sdr["the_tags"].ToString();
    the_date = sdr["the_date"].ToString();

    //Start file creation
    sb.AppendLine("[");
    sb.AppendLine("\"" + the_title + "\", ");
    sb.AppendLine("\"" + the_cats + "\", ");
    sb.AppendLine("\"" + the_tags + "\", ");
    sb.AppendLine("\"" + the_date + "\", ");
    sb.AppendLine("\"<a href=\\\"#\\\" class=\\\"sepV_a\\\" title=\\\"Edit\\\"><i class=\\\"icon-pencil\\\"></i></a>\"");

    sb.AppendLine("],");
}
if (sb.Length > 0)
{
    // Write result, sans characters for last newline (Environment.NewLine) and comma.
    writer.WriteLine(sb.ToString(0, sb.Length - (Environment.NewLine.Length + 1));
}

EDIT: Made clipping length dynamic by using Environment.NewLine.Length.