Question

Okay so my code looks kinda like this

        // Returns the note of a favorite pown if it exists
        string GetFavoriteNote(int id)
        {
            string notelist = Properties.Settings.Default.FavoriteNotesList;

            // If there's a note, return it
            if (notelist.Contains("'" + id + ":"))
            {
                // What to do here?
            }
            // If there's no note, return an empty string
            else
            {
                return String.Empty;
            }
        }

Now it’s basically a system where for each id the user can set a note, and it will be saved in this format: 'id:note','id:note',

Now what I want to do is select that note somehow and return it, so I’d have to like select from "'" + id + ":" until the ‘

If anyone knows how to do this, please help me out.
Thanks

Answer 1

Using a Regex seems like the cleanest approach to me:

string regexFormat = "'{0}:(.*?)'";
Match match = Regex.Match(notelist, string.Format(regexFormat, id));
return match.Success ? match.Groups[1].Value : string.Empty;

Alternatively however, you could use string splitting:

var notes = notelist.Split(',');
var idString = "'" + id + ":";
var note = notes.FirstOrDefault(n => n.StartsWith(idString));
if (note == null) return string.Empty;
return note.Substring(idString.Length, note.Length - (idString.Length + 1));