linq to create xml from csv

Question

I saw this excellent post: http://sqldud.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-convert-csv-to-xml-using-c.html

I have a csv file with the column titles in the first row of the csv. I would also like the linq statement to be able to handle a variable length number of columns. That way I would not have to change the code if more columns are added. Is there a way to do this? It would be great if the elements were the name of the column headers(first row).

Answer 1

You could accomplish this with code like the following

string inputFile = @"C:\Temp\somefile.csv";
string outputFile = @"C:\Temp\somefile_output.xml";

XDocument document = new XDocument();
document.Add(new XElement("root"));

using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFile))
{
    string[] headerRow = reader.ReadLine().Split(',');
    while (!reader.EndOfStream)
    {
        string[] items = reader.ReadLine().Split(',');

        document.Root.Add(new XElement("row",
            from item in items.Select((val, idx) => new { val, idx })
            join header in headerRow.Select((val, idx) => new { val, idx })
            on item.idx equals header.idx
            select new XElement(header.val, item.val)));
    }
}

document.Save(outputFile);

Which would turn a CSV file with the following contents

FirstField,SecondField,ThirdField,FourthField
1,2,3,4
5,6,7,8
9,10,11,12
13,14,15,16

Into an XML document

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>
  <row>
    <FirstField>1</FirstField>
    <SecondField>2</SecondField>
    <ThirdField>3</ThirdField>
    <FourthField>4</FourthField>
  </row>
  <row>
    <FirstField>5</FirstField>
    <SecondField>6</SecondField>
    <ThirdField>7</ThirdField>
    <FourthField>8</FourthField>
  </row>
  <row>
    <FirstField>9</FirstField>
    <SecondField>10</SecondField>
    <ThirdField>11</ThirdField>
    <FourthField>12</FourthField>
  </row>
  <row>
    <FirstField>13</FirstField>
    <SecondField>14</SecondField>
    <ThirdField>15</ThirdField>
    <FourthField>16</FourthField>
  </row>
</root>