Question

I’ve a csv file that contains the records below:

Col1,Col2,Col3

“Test,Test1”,1,3

And I’ve Linq query below which splits the csv to XML document. However, for given example above it’s spliting the “Test,Test1” in to two separate element.

var xml = new XElement("Root", source.Select(x => 
    new XElement("Testing", x.Split(splitChar).Select((Field, index) => 
        new XElement("Field" + index, Field)))).Skip(1));

This generates something like:

<Root>
<Testing Field0="Test" Field01="Test1" Field02="1" Field03="3" />

</Root>

But what i want is:

<Root>
<Testing Field0="Test,Test1" Field01="1" Field02="3" />

</Root>

Could anyone please help me achive above?

Answer 1

Instead of this:

x.Split(splitChar)

try this approach using a regular expression:

Regex.Matches(x, "\"[^\"]*\"|[^,]+").Cast<Match>().Select(m => m.Value)

This matches either a field that is quoted, for example: "foobar,baz" or something that doesn’t contain a comma.

There are some limitations with my answer:

• It doesn’t handle escaped quotes inside the string such as in this case: "Test1,Test\"two\",Test3",0,1. Do you need this?
• The separator is no longer a parameter, but hard coded. You have to be careful as some characters are special and need to be escaped in a regular expression. Consider using Regex.Escape if you want to build the regular expression based on the runtime value of splitChar.