how to read a csv file from a url?

Question

Im trying to create a web service which gets to a URL e.g. www.domain.co.uk/prices.csv and then reads the csv file. Is this possible and how? Ideally without downloading the csv file?

Answer 1

You could use:

public string GetCSV(string url) {     HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);     HttpWebResponse resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse();      StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(resp.GetResponseStream());     string results = sr.ReadToEnd();     sr.Close();      return results; }  

And then to split it:

public static void SplitCSV() {     List<string> splitted = new List<string>();     string fileList = getCSV("http://www.google.com");     string[] tempStr;      tempStr = fileList.Split(',');      foreach (string item in tempStr)     {         if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(item))         {             splitted.Add(item);         }     } } 

Though there are plenty of CSV parsers out there and i would advise against rolling your own. FileHelpers is a good one.