Question

I’m writing a C# program to convert a FoxPro database to XML, and everything works except the memo field is blank. Is there something I’m missing to convert that bit?

I’m using C# .Net 3.5 SP1, Visual FoxPro 9 SP 1 OLE DB Driver. Connection string is okay, as all other data is being pulled properly.

When I converted the FoxPro database to SQL Server, the memo field is also blank there, so I can’t convert twice.

Answer 1

Ended up having to do some work myself, but maybe it can help someone else out in the future:

        public static object GetDbaseOrFoxproRawValue(string DBPath, string TableName, string ColumnName,          string CompareColumnName, string CompareValue, bool CompareColumnIsAutoKey)     {         using (BinaryReader read = new BinaryReader(File.Open(             Path.Combine(DBPath, TableName + '.dbf'), FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite)))         {             // Is it a type of file that I can handle?             if (new byte[] { 0x02, 0x03, 0x30, 0x43, 0x63, 0x83, 0x8b,                              0xcb, 0xf5, 0xfb }.Contains(read.ReadByte()))             {                 // Skip date.                 read.BaseStream.Seek(3, SeekOrigin.Current);                  // Read useful datas...                 uint RecordCount = read.ReadUInt32();                 ushort FirstRecord = read.ReadUInt16();                 ushort RecordLength = read.ReadUInt16();                 int FieldCount = FirstRecord - 296 / 32;                  // Make sure things aren't stupid.                 ColumnName = ColumnName.ToLower();                 CompareColumnName = CompareColumnName.ToLower();                  // Find target column (field)                 string temp;                 UInt32 CompareFieldOffset = uint.MaxValue, FieldOffset = uint.MaxValue;                 byte CompareFieldLength = 0, FieldLength = 0;                 char FieldType = ' ';                 for (int i = 0; i < FieldCount; i++)                 {                     read.BaseStream.Seek(32 + (i * 32), SeekOrigin.Begin);                     temp = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(read.ReadBytes(11)).Replace('\0', '').ToLower();                     if (temp == CompareColumnName)                     {                         read.ReadChar();                         CompareFieldOffset = read.ReadUInt32();                         CompareFieldLength = read.ReadByte();                     }                     if (temp == ColumnName)                     {                         FieldType = read.ReadChar();                         FieldOffset = read.ReadUInt32();                         FieldLength = read.ReadByte();                     }                      if (CompareFieldOffset != uint.MaxValue && FieldOffset != uint.MaxValue)                         break;                 }                  // Make sure we can continue.                 if (CompareFieldOffset == uint.MaxValue ||                      FieldOffset == uint.MaxValue) return null;                  // Iterate through each record to find the one we want.                 for (int index = 0; index < RecordCount; index++)                 {                     read.BaseStream.Seek(FirstRecord + (index * RecordLength) + CompareFieldOffset, SeekOrigin.Begin);                     temp = Encoding.Default.GetString(read.ReadBytes(CompareFieldLength)).Replace('\0', '');                     if (temp == CompareValue)                     {                         read.BaseStream.Seek(FirstRecord + (index * RecordLength) + FieldOffset, SeekOrigin.Begin);                         switch (FieldType)                         {                             case 'M':                             case 'I': return read.ReadUInt32();                             case 'C':                             default: return Encoding.Default.GetString(read.ReadBytes(FieldLength)).Replace('\0', '');                         }                     }                 }             }             else             {                 return null;             }         }          return null;     } 

Just grab the result from that and use it as an index into the memo file (that code is pretty simple using the MSDN documentation).