FixedWidth.FileParser 1.1.0

.Net Library to read from fixed width or delimiter separated file using strongly typed objects.

Fixed Width or Delimiter Separated File

What is Fixed width or Delimiter separated text files?

Fixed width or Delimiter separated text file is a file that has a specific format which allows for the manipulation of textual information in an organized fashion.

Each row contains one record of information; each record can contain multiple pieces of data fields or columns. The data columns are separated by any character you specify called the delimiter. All rows in the file follow a consistent format and should be with the same number of data columns. Data columns could be empty with no value.

CASE 1 : Single line type delimiter file. Simple pipe '|' separated delimeter File (this could even be comma ',' separated CSV). If no delimiter is configured for the parser then by default a comma separated delimiter or csv is used.

|Mr|Jack Marias|Male|London|Active|||
|Dr|Bony Stringer|Male|New Jersey|Active||Paid|
|Mrs|Mary Ward|Female||Active|||
|Mr|Robert Webb|||Active|||

CASE 2: Multi line type delimiter file. The file has a header and footer along with data lines. In this file format, each row has an identifier called as Line head to determine the type of row in the file. Line head is the first value in each row. Default line heads are H, D, F for header, data and footer lines respectively. These defaults can be overridden in configuration.

|H|Department|Jun 23 2016  7:01PM|
|D||Jack Marias|Male|London|Active|||
|D|Dr|Bony Stringer|Male|New Jersey|Active||Paid|
|D|Mrs|Mary Ward|Female||Active|||
|D|Mr|Robert Webb|||Active|||
|F|4 Records|

Usage Notes

FixedWidth.FileParser can parse both of the above file formats.

The line heads and delimiter (separator) are configurable as required.
When using the default file provider, you need to configure the provider settings to set the file location to be searched, the archive policy and the archived folder location.

Additionally, You could also provide your custom file provider implementation to fetch files and override the default provider.

To read more on the parser configuration and code setup, please visit the documentation available on the project repository.