Question

Is there an easy way in C# to read a properties file that has each property on a separate line followed by an equals sign and the value, such as the following:

ServerName=prod-srv1 Port=8888 CustomProperty=Any value 

In Java, the Properties class handles this parsing easily:

Properties myProperties=new Properties(); FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream (new File('CustomProps.properties')); myProperties.load(fis); System.out.println(myProperties.getProperty('ServerName')); System.out.println(myProperties.getProperty('CustomProperty')); 

I can easily load the file in C# and parse each line, but is there a built in way to easily get a property without having to parse out the key name and equals sign myself? The C# information I have found seems to always favor XML, but this is an existing file that I don’t control and I would prefer to keep it in the existing format as it will require more time to get another team to change it to XML than parsing the existing file.

Answer 1

No there is no built-in support for this.

You have to make your own ‘INIFileReader’. Maybe something like this?

var data = new Dictionary<string, string>(); foreach (var row in File.ReadAllLines(PATH_TO_FILE))   data.Add(row.Split('=')[0], string.Join('=',row.Split('=').Skip(1).ToArray()));  Console.WriteLine(data['ServerName']); 

Edit: Updated to reflect Paul’s comment.