jitbit / CsvExport

Very simple CSV-export tool for C#

CsvExport

A very simple and very fast CSV-export tool for C#.

Features

1. Excel-compatible export (separator detected automatically, friendly-trimming rows and values for compatibility)
2. Escapes commas, quotes, multiline text
3. Exports dates in timezone-proof format
4. Extremely easy to use
5. NET Standard 2.0 library (compatible with both .NET Core and .NET Framework)
6. 30 times faster than CsvHelper
7. 4-times less memory usage

Benchmarks

Method	Mean	Error	StdDev	Gen0	Gen1	Allocated
😟 CsvHelper	1,300.38 us	32.043 us	1.756 us	17.5781	7.8125	114.25 KB
✅ CsvExport_Manual	31.22 us	5.750 us	0.315 us	4.7607	0.2441	29.37 KB
✅ CsvExport_Typed	52.68 us	1.453 us	0.080 us	4.7607	0.1221	29.46 KB

This benchmark is generating a 100-line CSV file with 4 columns. Check the "SpeedBenchmarks" code.

Usage examples:

Install via Nuget Install-Package CsvExport

For "manual" CSV ad-hoc generation use this:

var myExport = new CsvExport();

myExport.AddRow();
myExport["Region"] = "Los Angeles, USA";
myExport["Sales"] = 100000;
myExport["Date Opened"] = new DateTime(2003, 12, 31);

myExport.AddRow();
myExport["Region"] = "Canberra \"in\" Australia";
myExport["Sales"] = 50000;
myExport["Date Opened"] = new DateTime(2005, 1, 1, 9, 30, 0);

///ASP.NET MVC action example
return File(myExport.ExportToBytes(), "text/csv", "results.csv");

For generating CSV out of a typed List<T> of objects:

public class Foo
{
	public string Region { get; set; }
	public int Sales { get; set; }
	public DateTime DateOpened { get; set; }
}

var list = new List<Foo>
{
	new Foo { Region = "Los Angeles", Sales = 123321, DateOpened = DateTime.Now },
	new Foo { Region = "Canberra in Australia", Sales = 123321, DateOpened = DateTime.Now },
};

var myExport = new CsvExport();
myExport.AddRows(list);
string csv = myExport.Export();

Configuring is done via constructor parameters:

var myExport = new CsvExport(
	columnSeparator: ",",
	includeColumnSeparatorDefinitionPreamble: true, //Excel wants this in CSV files
	includeHeaderRow: true
);

Also, methods ExportToFile and ExportToBytes offer an optional encoding parameter.

License

The code is licensed under MIT License.

Sucessfully tested for years in production with our Jitbit Helpdesk Ticketing System