Vb.net – How to read a CSV file and display the results in a grid in Visual Basic 2010

csvdatagridvb.netvisual studio 2010

How do you read a CSV file and display the results in a grid in Visual Basic 2010? This sounds so simple but I still can't find the answer to it after googling for a while. I have DataGridView on a form and it's called DataGridView1. I have a CSV with just 3 columns of data and I want to be able to display them.

Best Answer

Use the TextFieldParser class built into the .Net framework.

Here's some code copied from an MSDN forum post by Paul Clement. It converts the CSV into a new in-memory DataTable and then binds the DataGridView to the DataTable

    Dim TextFileReader As New Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser("C:\Documents and Settings\...\My Documents\My Database\Text\SemiColonDelimited.txt")

    TextFileReader.TextFieldType = FileIO.FieldType.Delimited
    TextFileReader.SetDelimiters(";")

    Dim TextFileTable As DataTable = Nothing

    Dim Column As DataColumn
    Dim Row As DataRow
    Dim UpperBound As Int32
    Dim ColumnCount As Int32
    Dim CurrentRow As String()

    While Not TextFileReader.EndOfData
        Try
            CurrentRow = TextFileReader.ReadFields()
            If Not CurrentRow Is Nothing Then
                ''# Check if DataTable has been created
                If TextFileTable Is Nothing Then
                    TextFileTable = New DataTable("TextFileTable")
                    ''# Get number of columns
                    UpperBound = CurrentRow.GetUpperBound(0)
                    ''# Create new DataTable
                    For ColumnCount = 0 To UpperBound
                        Column = New DataColumn()
                        Column.DataType = System.Type.GetType("System.String")
                        Column.ColumnName = "Column" & ColumnCount
                        Column.Caption = "Column" & ColumnCount
                        Column.ReadOnly = True
                        Column.Unique = False
                        TextFileTable.Columns.Add(Column)
                    Next
                End If
                Row = TextFileTable.NewRow
                For ColumnCount = 0 To UpperBound
                    Row("Column" & ColumnCount) = CurrentRow(ColumnCount).ToString
                Next
                TextFileTable.Rows.Add(Row)
            End If
        Catch ex As _
        Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.MalformedLineException
            MsgBox("Line " & ex.Message & _
            "is not valid and will be skipped.")
        End Try
    End While
    TextFileReader.Dispose()
    frmMain.DataGrid1.DataSource = TextFileTable