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fastCSV

Fast CSV reader writer in c#.

Install

fastCSV is available on NuGet.org as mgholam.fastCSV.

> dotnet add package mgholam.fastCSV

Nuget Nuget

Features

  • Fully CSV standard compliant
    • Multi-line
    • Quoted columns
    • Keeps spaces between delimiters
  • Really fast reading and writing of CSV files (see performance)
  • Tiny 8kb DLL compiled to net40 or netstandard20
  • Ability to get a typed list of objects from a CSV file
  • Ability to filter a CSV file while loading
  • Ability to specify a custom delimiter

Usage

public class cars
{
    // you can use fields or properties
    public string Year;
    public string Make;
    public string Model;
    public string Description;
    public string Price;
}

// listcars = List<cars>
var listcars = fastCSV.ReadFile<cars>(
    "csvstandard.csv", // filename
    true,              // has header
    ',',               // delimiter
    (o, c) =>          // to object function o : cars object, c : columns array read
    {
        o.Year = c[0];
        o.Make = c[1];
        o.Model = c[2];
        o.Description = c[3];
        o.Price = c[4];
        // add to list
        return true;
    });

fastCSV.WriteFile<LocalWeatherData>(
    "filename2.csv",   // filename
    new string[] { "WBAN", "Date", "SkyCondition" }, // headers
    '|',               // delimiter
    list,              // list of LocalWeatherData to save
    (o, c) =>          // from object function 
	{
    	c.Add(o.WBAN);
    	c.Add(o.Date.ToString("yyyyMMdd"));
    	c.Add(o.SkyCondition);
	});

Helper functions for performance

fastCSV has the following helper functions:

  • int ToInt(string s) creates an int from a string
  • int ToInt(string s, int index, int count) creates an int from a substring
  • DateTime ToDateTimeISO(string value, bool UseUTCDateTime) creates an ISO standard DateTime i.e. yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss ( optional part.nnnZ)
public class LocalWeatherData
{
    public string WBAN;
    public DateTime Date;
    public string SkyCondition;
}

var list = fastCSV.ReadFile<LocalWeatherData>("201503hourly.txt", true, ',', (o, c) =>
    {
        bool add = true;
        o.WBAN = c[0];
        // c[1] data is in "20150301" format
        o.Date = new DateTime(fastCSV.ToInt(c[1], 0, 4), 
                              fastCSV.ToInt(c[1], 4, 2), 
                              fastCSV.ToInt(c[1], 6, 2));
        o.SkyCondition = c[4];
        //if (o.Date.Day % 2 == 0)
        //    add = false;
        return add;
    });

Performance v1

Loading the https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/qclcd/QCLCD201503.zip file which has 4,496,263 rows on my machine as a relative comparison to other libraries:

  • fastcsv : 11.20s 639Mb used
  • nreco.csv : 6.76s 800Mb used
  • .net string.Split() : 11.50s 638Mb used
  • tinycsvparser : 34s 992Mb used

v2

Rewritten the internals:

  • using a char buffer to read from the file instead of File.ReadLines()
  • using Span like MGSpan data structure for .net4
  • columns are only converted to string when used in the delegate
  • fast create object IL instead of new T()

Performance

  • fastcsv net4: 6.27s 753Mb used
  • fastcsv core : 6.51s 669Mb used

v2.0.1

// new overloads for more control
// has headers
ReadFile<T>(string filename, char delimiter, ToOBJ<T> mapper) 
// backward compatibility to v2.0.0
ReadFile<T>(string filename, bool hasheader, char delimiter, ToOBJ<T> mapper)
// no headers and you specify the column count
ReadFile<T>(string filename, int colcount, char delimiter, ToOBJ<T> mapper) 

v2.0.5

// new overloads for reading from streams
ReadStream<T>(TextReader sr, char delimiter, ToOBJ<T> mapper)
ReadStream<T>(TextReader sr, bool hasheader, char delimiter, ToOBJ<T> mapper)
ReadStream<T>(TextReader sr, int colcount, char delimiter, ToOBJ<T> mapper)

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