Question

I’m writing a script to check a bunch of Excel spreadsheets for certain values, and I’ve wound up with code that looks like this:

    public bool checkContents(Excel._Worksheet sht, string address, string cellValue)
    {
        Excel.Range tempRange = sht.get_Range(address);
        return Convert.ToString(tempRange.Value) == cellValue;
    }

    public string getVersion(Excel._Worksheet sht)
    {
        if (checkContents(sht,"a4","Changes for Version 24"))
        {
            return "24";
        }
        else if (checkContents(sht,"a1","Changes for Version 23 (Official)"))
        {
            return "23";
        }
        else if (checkContents(sht,"a2","Changes for Version 22"))
        {
            return "22";
        }


       //and so on for another 10 if-else blocks 
    }

I know that for a given sheet, only one of the if statements will be true.

Is there a more concise way to write this function other than as a long sequence of ifs?

Answer 1

You could try something like this (untested, so may have some syntactical errors)

    private class VersionSpec
    {
        public string Address { get; private set; }
        public string CellValue { get; private set; }
        public string Version { get; private set; }

        public VersionSpec (string address, string cellValue, string version)
        {
            Address = address;
            CellValue = cellValue;
            Version = version;
        }
    }

    public string getVersion(Excel._Worksheet sht)
    {
        VersionSpec[] versionSpecs = new []
        {
            new VersionSpec("a4", "Changes for Version 24", "24"),
            new VersionSpec("a1", "Changes for Version 23 (Official)", "23"),
            new VersionSpec("a2", "Changes for Version 22", "22"),
            // other versions...
        }

        foreach(VersionSpec versionSpec in versionSpecs)
        {
            if(checkContents(sht, versionSpec.Address, versionSpec.CellValue))
            {
                return versionSpec.Version;
            }
        } 
    }