Building XML from CSV file (ASP.NET)

Question

I am trying to build an XML string from a CSV file in ASP.NET. I don't need the XML page to display necessarily because I'm building the XML string to then send to an API. The CSV is hosted on a server.

I need to be able to loop through the CSV until there is a blank row (the rows will vary as I use the CSV) and then stop the loop. It will go something like this (<Info> would be the content from the different rows in the CSV) :

<Example>
    <Info>
        <Name>This would be the name</Name>
        <Address>This would be the address</Address>
        <Email>This would be the email</Email>
    </Info>
    <Info>
        <Name>This would be the name</Name>
        <Address>This would be the address</Address>
        <Email>This would be the email</Email>
    </Info>
    <Info>
        <Name>This would be the name</Name>
        <Address>This would be the address</Address>
        <Email>This would be the email</Email>
    </Info>
</Example>

That's an example of how it would work if there were three rows in the CSV.

I saw this code here on Stack Overflow:

var lines = File.ReadAllLines("my_csv.csv");

var xml = new XElement("TopElement",
   lines.Select(line => new XElement("Item",
      line.Split(';')
      .Select((column, index) => new XElement("Column" + index, column)))));

xml.Save("my_csv.csv");

And I tried that (substituting my csv file name and path in) and that page wouldn't load.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? Thank you.

Answer 1

You can easily build this using a simple StringBuilder. One example would be:

void Main()
{
     StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
     sb.Append("<Example>");

    foreach(var line in File.ReadAllLines(@"c:\foo\line.csv"))
    {
      var row = line.Split(',');
      if(row.Length>=3)
      {
        sb.Append("<Info>");
        sb.Append("<Name>"+row[0]+"</Name>");
        sb.Append("<Address>"+row[1]+"</Address>");
        sb.Append("<Email>"+row[2]+"</Email>");
        sb.Append("</Info>");
      }
      else//assume blank row. Break out of loop
         break;
   }
   sb.Append("</Example>"); 

   //sb.ToString() has the piece of XML you want.
}

Another alternative would be to use an XMLSerializer, but producing the output exactly the same way you want/need it may not be as simple.