Writing a CSV file in .net
CsvHelper (a library I maintain) also available via NuGet.
CsvHelper can automatically write your class objects to a file for you.
var myObj = new MyCustomClass
{
Prop1 = "one",
Prop2 = 2
};
var streamWriter = // Create a writer to somewhere...
var csvWriter = new CsvWriter( streamWriter );
// You can write a single record.
csvWriter.WriteRecord( myObj );
// You can also write a collection of records.
var myRecords = new List<MyCustomClass>{ myObj };
csvWriter.WriteRecords( myRecords );
If there are any commas in your cell, surround the entire cell with double quotes, eg:
cell 1,cell 2,"This is one cell, even with a comma",cell4,etc
And if you want a literal double quote, do two of them, eg:
cell 1,cell 2,"This is my cell and it has ""quotes"" in it",cell 4,etc
As for dates, stick to ISO format, and you should be fine (eg yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss)
I would just like to add there's an RFC that specifies the CSV format which is what I would regard as the canonical source.
I've used filehelpers extensively and it's pretty awesome for generating CSVs.
Here is the function you can use to generate a row of CSV file from string list (IEnumerable(Of String) or string array can be used as well):
Function CreateCSVRow(strArray As List(Of String)) As String
Dim csvCols As New List(Of String)
Dim csvValue As String
Dim needQuotes As Boolean
For i As Integer = 0 To strArray.Count() - 1
csvValue = strArray(i)
needQuotes = (csvValue.IndexOf(",", StringComparison.InvariantCulture) >= 0 _
OrElse csvValue.IndexOf("""", StringComparison.InvariantCulture) >= 0 _
OrElse csvValue.IndexOf(vbCrLf, StringComparison.InvariantCulture) >= 0)
csvValue = csvValue.Replace("""", """""")
csvCols.Add(If(needQuotes, """" & csvValue & """", csvValue))
Next
Return String.Join(",", csvCols.ToArray())
End Function
As I think, it won't be difficult to convert from VB.NET to C#)