Reading data from excel in to Json object in c#

Question

I have an Excel sheet which has a set of columns and rows with data. I want to read the complete Excel sheet data as JSON, so that later I can write the JSON to a file. How can I do this?

Sample data:

Names    RegNo    Description
ABCD     12345    DemoInfo
XYZ      67890    DemoInfo2

Answer 1

Connect to the Excel sheet via the ADO.NET OleDb provider. Then, use a JSON library for C# to generate the JSON string, and save the file. (Or use the JavascriptSerialzer, as @boades suggested).

This example uses the JSON.NET library.

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Data.Common;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using System.IO;

namespace ConsoleApplication1 {
    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            var pathToExcel = @"C:\path\to\excel\file.xlsx";
            var sheetName = "NameOfSheet";
            var destinationPath = @"C:\path\to\save\json\file.json";

            //Use this connection string if you have Office 2007+ drivers installed and 
            //your data is saved in a .xlsx file
            var connectionString = $@"
                Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;
                Data Source={pathToExcel};
                Extended Properties=""Excel 12.0 Xml;HDR=YES""
            ";

            //Creating and opening a data connection to the Excel sheet 
            using (var conn=new OleDbConnection(connectionString)) {
                conn.Open();

                var cmd=conn.CreateCommand();
                cmd.CommandText = $"SELECT * FROM [{sheetName}$]";

                using (var rdr=cmd.ExecuteReader()) {

                    //LINQ query - when executed will create anonymous objects for each row
                    var query = rdr.Cast<DbDataRecord>().Select(row => new {
                        name = row[0],
                        regno = row[1],
                        description = row[2]
                    });

                    //Generates JSON from the LINQ query
                    var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(query);

                    //Write the file to the destination path    
                    File.WriteAllText(destinationPath, json);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Links:

• Retrieving and Modifying Data in ADO.NET - how to use connections, commands and readers
• Excel 2007 connection strings
• Older Excel connection strings under the 'OLEDB Providers' section
• JSON libraries for C# can be found on the JSON page
• JSON.NET
• Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable, if you don't have Excel 2007+ installed

Answer 2

Save it as a CSV. Then use File.ReadLines to enumerate over each line, followed by String.Split to read each column. Format the data as a JSON string and save it to a file.