CsvHelper - a tidy package for working with CSV content

I needed to transform some CSV data recently and my Excel skills are somewhat lacking when it comes to the funky stuff, so I had a hunt around for a solution I could use to run up a quick and dirty console application to do the job for me. I was so diligent I didn't even leave it with its default name of ConsoleApp36483427, it got a proper name!

The package I found is:

PM> Install-Package CsvHelper

Which absolutely rocks!

I had a CSV file which contained many records, all with four fields, those being:

1. ClientId
2. Day
3. TotalTalkTime
4. TotalCallCount

Getting the data into a strongly-typed IEnumerable was as simple as defining a type to hold the data from the file:

struct Record
{
    public int ClientId { get; set; }
    public int Day { get; set; }
    public int TotalTalkTime { get; set; }
    public int TotalCallCount { get; set; }
}

Adding a "using" for CsvHelper and writing a tiny, tiny bit of code:

var filePath = @"sourceFile.csv";
IEnumerable<Record> allRecords = null;

using (var reader = File.OpenText(filePath))
{
    var csvParser = new CsvParser(reader);
    CsvReader r = new CsvReader(csvParser);
    allRecords = r.GetRecords<Record>().ToArray();

}

After that I was able to munge the data to my hearts content, fantastic!