We Keep Coding

Multiple lines and columns in Specflow

I have a Specflow table that looks like this.
When I Perform POST Operation for "/example/" with body
| answerValue1 | answerValue2 | countryCode | Cash |
| Yes | Yes | AD | 76-100% |
| | | AF | |
The column CountryCode is the only one that can be multiple choices.
What I tried to do was to add the columns to dictionary with a simple tableExtenstions
public class TableExtensions
{
public static Dictionary<string, string> ToDictionary(Table table)
{
var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
foreach (var row in table.Rows)
{
dictionary.Add(row[0], row[1]);
}
return dictionary;
}
}
and call it from the method.
var dictionary = TableExtensions.ToDictionary(table);
var countryCode = dictionary["countryCode"];
Unfortnally I get error The given key was not present in the dictionary,
since the dictionary only returns two values from the first and the second Key
Ofcourse if I change the keys to row[2], row[3] it gets the right columns.
But I would like to reuse the Table Extension.
Also i tried to increment them, but it only took the first to columns
var i = 0;
foreach (var row in table.Rows)
{
dictionary.Add(row[i], row[i]);
i++;
}
Does anyone has a better solution?

I'm not entirely sure what you want the dictionary to ultimately contain, but as you mention that manually changing the rows it looks for to:
row[2], row[3]
gives the data you want, perhaps this would give you the reusability you're looking for:
public class TableExtensions
{
public static Dictionary<string, string> ToDictionary(Table table, int columnOne, int columnTwo)
{
int i = 0;
var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
foreach (var row in table.Rows)
{
dictionary.Add(row[columnOne], row[columnTwo]);
}
return dictionary;
}
}
Usage:
var dictionary = TableExtensions.ToDictionary(table, 2, 3);
This produces a dictionary with the following contents:
You could get the country code like this:
foreach (var row in dictionary)
{
var countryCode = row.Key;
var score = row.Value ?? string.empty;
}

Given the simplicity of the country codes I would make them a comma separated list and use a vertical table instead:
When I Perform POST Operation for "/example/"
| Field | Value |
| answerValue1 | ... |
| answerValue2 | ... |
| countryCodes | AD, AF |
| cash | ... |
In your step definition:
var example = table.CreateInstance<ExampleRow>();
// use example.GetCountryCodes();
And the ExampleRow class to parse the table into an object:
public class ExampleRow
{
public string AnswerValue1 { get; set; }
public string AnswerValue2 { get; set; }
private string[] countryCodes;
public string CountryCodes
{
get => string.Join(", ", countryCodes);
set => countryCodes = value.Split(", ");
}
public string[] GetCountryCodes()
{
return countryCodes;
}
}

In C#, what is the best way to parse this WIKI markup?

I need to take data that I am reading in from a WIKI markup page and store it as a table structure. I am trying to figure out how to properly parse the below markup syntax into some table data structure in C#
Here is an example table:
|| Owner || Action || Status || Comments ||
| Bill | Fix the lobby | In Progress | This is easy |
| Joe | Fix the bathroom | In Progress | Plumbing \\
\\
Electric \\
\\
Painting \\
\\
\\ |
| Scott | Fix the roof | Complete | This is expensive |
and here is how it comes in directly:
|| Owner|| Action || Status || Comments || | Bill\\ | fix the lobby |In Progress | This is eary| | Joe\\ |fix the bathroom\\ | In progress| plumbing \\Electric \\Painting \\ \\ | | Scott \\ | fix the roof \\ | Complete | this is expensive|
So as you can see:
The column headers have "||" as the separator
A row columns have a separator or "|"
A row might span multiple lines (as in the second data row example above) so i would have to keep reading until I hit the same number of "|" (cols) that I have in the header row.
I tried reading in line by line and then concatenating lines that had "\" in between then but that seemed a bit hacky.
I also tried to simply read in as a full string and then just parse by "||" first and then keep reading until I hit the same number of "|" and then go to the next row. This seemed to work but it feel like there might be a more elegant way using regular expressions or something similar.
Can anyone suggest the correct way to parse this data?

I have largely replaced the previous answer, due to the fact that the format of the input after your edit is substantially different from the one posted before. This leads to a somewhat different solution.
Because there are no longer any line breaks after a row, the only way to determine for sure where a row ends, is to require that each row has the same number of columns as the table header. That is at least if you don't want to rely on some potentially fragile white space convention present in the one and only provided example string (i.e. that the row separator is the only | not preceded by a space). Your question at least does not provide this as the specification for a row delimiter.
The below "parser" provides at least the error handling validity checks that can be derived from your format specification and example string and also allows for tables that have no rows. The comments explain what it is doing in basic steps.
public class TableParser
{
const StringSplitOptions SplitOpts = StringSplitOptions.None;
const string RowColSep = "|";
static readonly string[] HeaderColSplit = { "||" };
static readonly string[] RowColSplit = { RowColSep };
static readonly string[] MLColSplit = { #"\\" };
public class TableRow
{
public List<string[]> Cells;
}
public class Table
{
public string[] Header;
public TableRow[] Rows;
}
public static Table Parse(string text)
{
// Isolate the header columns and rows remainder.
var headerSplit = text.Split(HeaderColSplit, SplitOpts);
Ensure(headerSplit.Length > 1, "At least 1 header column is required in the input");
// Need to check whether there are any rows.
var hasRows = headerSplit.Last().IndexOf(RowColSep) >= 0;
var header = headerSplit.Skip(1)
.Take(headerSplit.Length - (hasRows ? 2 : 1))
.Select(c => c.Trim())
.ToArray();
if (!hasRows) // If no rows for this table, we are done.
return new Table() { Header = header, Rows = new TableRow[0] };
// Get all row columns from the remainder.
var rowsCols = headerSplit.Last().Split(RowColSplit, SplitOpts);
// Require same amount of columns for a row as the header.
Ensure((rowsCols.Length % (header.Length + 1)) == 1,
"The number of row colums does not match the number of header columns");
var rows = new TableRow[(rowsCols.Length - 1) / (header.Length + 1)];
// Fill rows by sequentially taking # header column cells
for (int ri = 0, start = 1; ri < rows.Length; ri++, start += header.Length + 1)
{
rows[ri] = new TableRow() {
Cells = rowsCols.Skip(start).Take(header.Length)
.Select(c => c.Split(MLColSplit, SplitOpts).Select(p => p.Trim()).ToArray())
.ToList()
};
};
return new Table { Header = header, Rows = rows };
}
private static void Ensure(bool check, string errorMsg)
{
if (!check)
throw new InvalidDataException(errorMsg);
}
}
When used like this:
public static void Main(params string[] args)
{
var wikiLine = #"|| Owner|| Action || Status || Comments || | Bill\\ | fix the lobby |In Progress | This is eary| | Joe\\ |fix the bathroom\\ | In progress| plumbing \\Electric \\Painting \\ \\ | | Scott \\ | fix the roof \\ | Complete | this is expensive|";
var table = TableParser.Parse(wikiLine);
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", table.Header));
foreach (var r in table.Rows)
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", r.Cells.Select(c => string.Join(Environment.NewLine + "\t# ", c))));
}
It will produce the below output:
Where "\t# " represents a newline caused by the presence of \\ in the input.

Here's a solution which populates a DataTable. It does require a litte bit of data massaging (Trim), but the main parsing is Splits and Linq.
var str = #"|| Owner|| Action || Status || Comments || | Bill\\ | fix the lobby |In Progress | This is eary| | Joe\\ |fix the bathroom\\ | In progress| plumbing \\Electric \\Painting \\ \\ | | Scott \\ | fix the roof \\ | Complete | this is expensive|";
var headerStop = str.LastIndexOf("||");
var headers = str.Substring(0, headerStop).Split(new string[1] { "||" }, StringSplitOptions.None).Skip(1).ToList();
var records = str.Substring(headerStop + 4).TrimEnd(new char[2] { ' ', '|' }).Split(new string[1] { "| |" }, StringSplitOptions.None).ToList();
var tbl = new DataTable();
headers.ForEach(h => tbl.Columns.Add(h.Trim()));
records.ForEach(r => tbl.Rows.Add(r.Split('|')));

This makes some assumptions but seems to work for your sample data. I'm sure if I worked at I could combine the expressions and clean it up but you'll get the idea.
It will also allow for rows that do not have the same number of cells as the header which I think is something confluence can do.
List<List<string>> table = new List<List<string>>();
var match = Regex.Match(raw, #"(?:(?:\|\|([^|]*))*\n)?");
if (match.Success)
{
var headersWithExtra = match.Groups[1].Captures.Cast<Capture>().Select(c=>c.Value);
List<String> headerRow = headersWithExtra.Take(headersWithExtra.Count()-1).ToList();
if (headerRow.Count > 0)
{
table.Add(headerRow);
}
}
match = Regex.Match(raw + "\r\n", #"[^\n]*\n" + #"(?:\|([^|]*))*");
var cellsWithExtra = match.Groups[1].Captures.Cast<Capture>().Select(c=>c.Value);
List<string> row = new List<string>();
foreach (string cell in cellsWithExtra)
{
if (cell.Trim(' ', '\t') == "\r\n")
{
if (!table.Contains(row) && row.Count > 0)
{
table.Add(row);
}
row = new List<string>();
}
else
{
row.Add(cell);
}
}

This ended up very similar to Jon Tirjan's answer, although it cuts the LINQ to a single statement (the code to replace that last one was horrifically ugly) and is a bit more extensible. For example, it will replace the Confluence line breaks \\ with a string of your choosing, you can choose to trim or not trim whitespace from around elements, etc.
private void ParseWikiTable(string input, string newLineReplacement = " ")
{
string separatorHeader = "||";
string separatorRow = "| |";
string separatorElement = "|";
input = Regex.Replace(input, #"[ \\]{2,}", newLineReplacement);
string inputHeader = input.Substring(0, input.LastIndexOf(separatorHeader));
string inputContent = input.Substring(input.LastIndexOf(separatorHeader) + separatorHeader.Length);
string[] headerArray = SimpleSplit(inputHeader, separatorHeader);
string[][] rowArray = SimpleSplit(inputContent, separatorRow).Select(r => SimpleSplit(r, separatorElement)).ToArray();
// do something with output data
TestPrint(headerArray);
foreach (var r in rowArray) { TestPrint(r); }
}
private string[] SimpleSplit(string input, string separator, bool trimWhitespace = true)
{
input = input.Trim();
if (input.StartsWith(separator)) { input = input.Substring(separator.Length); }
if (input.EndsWith(separator)) { input = input.Substring(0, input.Length - separator.Length); }
string[] segments = input.Split(new string[] { separator }, StringSplitOptions.None);
if (trimWhitespace)
{
for (int i = 0; i < segments.Length; i++)
{
segments[i] = segments[i].Trim();
}
}
return segments;
}
private void TestPrint(string[] lst)
{
string joined = "[" + String.Join("::", lst) + "]";
Console.WriteLine(joined);
}
Console output from your direct input string:
[Owner::Action::Status::Comments]
[Bill::fix the lobby::In Progress::This is eary]
[Joe::fix the bathroom::In progress::plumbing Electric Painting]
[Scott::fix the roof::Complete::this is expensive]

A generic regex solution that populate a datatable and is a little flexible with the syntax.
var text = #"|| Owner|| Action || Status || Comments || | Bill\\ | fix the lobby |In Progress | This is eary| | Joe\\ |fix the bathroom\\ | In progress| plumbing \\Electric \\Painting \\ \\ | | Scott \\ | fix the roof \\ | Complete | this is expensive|";
// Get Headers
var regHeaders = new Regex(#"\|\|\s*(\w[^\|]+)", RegexOptions.Compiled);
var headers = regHeaders.Matches(text);
//Get Rows, based on number of headers columns
var regLinhas = new Regex(String.Format(#"(?:\|\s*(\w[^\|]+)){{{0}}}", headers.Count));
var rows = regLinhas.Matches(text);
var tbl = new DataTable();
foreach (Match header in headers)
{
tbl.Columns.Add(header.Groups[1].Value);
}
foreach (Match row in rows)
{
tbl.Rows.Add(row.Groups[1].Captures.OfType<Capture>().Select(col => col.Value).ToArray());
}

Here's a solution involving regular expressions. It takes a single string as input and returns a List of headers and a List> of rows/columns. It also trims white space, which may or may not be the desired behavior, so be aware of that. It even prints things nicely :)
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
namespace parseWiki
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string content = #"|| Owner || Action || Status || Comments || | Bill\\ | fix the lobby |In Progress | This is eary| | Joe\\ |fix the bathroom\\ | In progress| plumbing \\Electric \\Painting \\ \\ | | Scott \\ | fix the roof \\ | Complete | this is expensive|";
content = content.Replace(#"\\", "");
string headerContent = content.Substring(0, content.LastIndexOf("||") + 2);
string cellContent = content.Substring(content.LastIndexOf("||") + 2);
MatchCollection headerMatches = new Regex(#"\|\|([^|]*)(?=\|\|)", RegexOptions.Singleline).Matches(headerContent);
MatchCollection cellMatches = new Regex(#"\|([^|]*)(?=\|)", RegexOptions.Singleline).Matches(cellContent);
List<string> headers = new List<string>();
foreach (Match match in headerMatches)
{
if (match.Groups.Count > 1)
{
headers.Add(match.Groups[1].Value.Trim());
}
}
List<List<string>> body = new List<List<string>>();
List<string> newRow = new List<string>();
foreach (Match match in cellMatches)
{
if (newRow.Count > 0 && newRow.Count % headers.Count == 0)
{
body.Add(newRow);
newRow = new List<string>();
}
else
{
newRow.Add(match.Groups[1].Value.Trim());
}
}
body.Add(newRow);
print(headers, body);
}
static void print(List<string> headers, List<List<string>> body)
{
var CELL_SIZE = 20;
for (int i = 0; i < headers.Count; i++)
{
Console.Write(headers[i].Truncate(CELL_SIZE).PadRight(CELL_SIZE) + " ");
}
Console.WriteLine("\n" + "".PadRight( (CELL_SIZE + 2) * headers.Count, '-'));
for (int r = 0; r < body.Count; r++)
{
List<string> row = body[r];
for (int c = 0; c < row.Count; c++)
{
Console.Write(row[c].Truncate(CELL_SIZE).PadRight(CELL_SIZE) + " ");
}
Console.WriteLine("");
}
Console.WriteLine("\n\n\n");
Console.ReadKey(false);
}
}
public static class StringExt
{
public static string Truncate(this string value, int maxLength)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value) || value.Length <= maxLength) return value;
return value.Substring(0, maxLength - 3) + "...";
}
}
}

Read the input string one character at a time and use a state-machine to decide what should be done with each input character. This approach probably needs more code, but it will be easier to maintain and to extend than regular expressions.

TreeView from database with null

I have som problem populating a treeview in c# from database. The table looks like this:
| code | description | attached to |
---------------------------------------
| P001 | TEST001 | NULL |
| P0001 | TEST002 | P001 |
| P002 | TEST003 | NULL |
| P00201 | TESTXXX | P002 |
| P00222 | TESTXXX | P002 |
| P002020 | TESTSSS | P00222 |
This does not work.
protected void PopulateTreeView(TreeNodeCollection parentNode, string parentID, DataTable folders)
{
foreach (DataRow folder in folders.Rows)
{
// if (Convert.ToInt32(folder["Attached to"]) == parentID)
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(folder["Attached to"].ToString()))
{
String key = folder["code"].ToString();
String text = folder["description"].ToString();
TreeNodeCollection newParentNode = parentNode.Add(key, text).Nodes;
//PopulateTreeView(newParentNode, Convert.ToInt32(folder["code"]), folders);
PopulateTreeView(newParentNode, folder["code"].ToString(), folders);
}
}
}

The problem is with your If condition. You should search for rows that are attached to parentID. Here is corrected method with test:
public void Test_PopulateTreeViews()
{
var rootNode = new TreeNode();
var folders = new DataTable();
folders.Columns.Add("code");
folders.Columns.Add("description");
folders.Columns.Add("Attached to");
folders.Rows.Add("P001", "TEST001", string.Empty);
folders.Rows.Add("P0001", "TEST002", "P001");
folders.Rows.Add("P002", "TEST003", null);
folders.Rows.Add("P00201", "TEST003", "P002");
folders.Rows.Add("P00222", "TESTXXX", "P002");
folders.Rows.Add("P002020", "TESTSSS", "P00222");
PopulateTreeView(rootNode, string.Empty, folders);
}
private void PopulateTreeView(TreeNode parentNode, string parentID, DataTable folders)
{
foreach (DataRow folder in folders.Rows)
{
if (folder["Attached to"].ToString() == parentID)
{
String key = folder["code"].ToString();
String text = folder["description"].ToString();
var newParentNode = new TreeNode(key, text);
parentNode.ChildNodes.Add(newParentNode);
PopulateTreeView(newParentNode, folder["code"].ToString(), folders);
}
}
}
});

reading a CSV into a Datatable without knowing the structure

I am trying to read a CSV into a datatable.
The CSV maybe have hundreds of columns and only up to 20 rows.
It will look something like this:
+----------+-----------------+-------------+---------+---+
| email1 | email2 | email3 | email4 | … |
+----------+-----------------+-------------+---------+---+
| ccemail1 | anotherccemail1 | 3rdccemail1 | ccemail | |
| ccemail2 | anotherccemail2 | 3rdccemail2 | | |
| ccemail3 | anotherccemail3 | | | |
| ccemail4 | anotherccemail4 | | | |
| ccemail5 | | | | |
| ccemail6 | | | | |
| ccemail7 | | | | |
| … | | | | |
+----------+-----------------+-------------+---------+---+
i am trying to use genericparser for this; however, i believe that it requires you to know the column names.
string strID, strName, strStatus;
using (GenericParser parser = new GenericParser())
{
parser.SetDataSource("MyData.txt");
parser.ColumnDelimiter = "\t".ToCharArray();
parser.FirstRowHasHeader = true;
parser.SkipStartingDataRows = 10;
parser.MaxBufferSize = 4096;
parser.MaxRows = 500;
parser.TextQualifier = '\"';
while (parser.Read())
{
strID = parser["ID"]; //as you can see this requires you to know the column names
strName = parser["Name"];
strStatus = parser["Status"];
// Your code here ...
}
}
is there a way to read this file into a datatable without know the column names?

It's so simple!
var adapter = new GenericParsing.GenericParserAdapter(filepath);
DataTable dt = adapter.GetDataTable();
This will automatically do everything for you.

I looked at the source code, and you can access the data by column index too, like this
var firstColumn = parser[0]
Replace the 0 with the column number.
The number of colums can be found using
parser.ColumnCount

I'm not familiar with that GenericParser, i would suggest to use tools like TextFieldParser, FileHelpers or this CSV-Reader.
But this simple manual approach should work also:
IEnumerable<String> lines = File.ReadAllLines(filePath);
String header = lines.First();
var headers = header.Split(new[]{','}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
DataTable tbl = new DataTable();
for (int i = 0; i < headers.Length; i++)
{
tbl.Columns.Add(headers[i]);
}
var data = lines.Skip(1);
foreach(var line in data)
{
var fields = line.Split(new[]{','}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
DataRow newRow = tbl.Rows.Add();
newRow.ItemArray = fields;
}

i used generic parser to do it.
On the first run through the loop i get the columns names and then reference them to add them to a list
In my case i have pivoted the data but here is a code sample if it helps someone
bool firstRow = true;
List<string> columnNames = new List<string>();
List<Tuple<string, string, string>> results = new List<Tuple<string, string, string>>();
while (parser.Read())
{
if (firstRow)
{
for (int i = 0; i < parser.ColumnCount; i++)
{
if (parser.GetColumnName(i).Contains("FY"))
{
columnNames.Add(parser.GetColumnName(i));
Console.Log("Column found: {0}", parser.GetColumnName(i));
}
}
firstRow = false;
}
foreach (var col in columnNames)
{
double actualCost = 0;
bool hasValueParsed = Double.TryParse(parser[col], out actualCost);
csvData.Add(new ProjectCost
{
ProjectItem = parser["ProjectItem"],
ActualCosts = actualCost,
ColumnName = col
});
}
}

Sorting DataTable-columns

I have a datatable something like this:
| Col1 | Col6 | Col3 | Col43 | Col0 |
---------------------------------------------------
RowA | 1 | 6 | 54 | 4 | 123 |
As you see, the Cols are not sorted by their numbers. That is what I want it to look like after the "magic":
| Col0 | Col1 | Col3 | Col6 | Col43 |
---------------------------------------------------
RowA | 123 | 1 | 54 | 6 | 4 |
Is there a built-in function for such things in C#? And if not, how could I get started with this?

You can do the column sorting in the table itself:
dt.Columns["Col0"].SetOrdinal(0);
dt.Columns["Col1"].SetOrdinal(1);
dt.Columns["Col2"].SetOrdinal(2);

You don't need to sort the columns in the DataTable object, just copy the column names to an array and sort the array. Then use the array to access the column values in the right order.
Sample:
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var dt = new DataTable { Columns = { "A3", "A2", "B1", "B3", "B2", "A1" } };
dt.BeginLoadData();
dt.Rows.Add("A3val", "A2val", "B1val", "B3val", "B2val", "A1val");
dt.EndLoadData();
string[] names=new string[dt.Columns.Count];
for (int i = 0; i < dt.Columns.Count;i++ )
{
names[i] = dt.Columns[i].ColumnName;
}
Array.Sort(names);
foreach (var name in names)
{
Console.Out.WriteLine("{0}={1}", name, dt.Rows[0][name]);
}
Console.ReadLine();
}

Here is my code, surely not is the best solution but works. In my case I let a fixed column that could be "Nombre" or "Problem", this always be the first in column order.
// class
public class stringInt
{
public string Nombre;
public int orden;
}
// function
static public DataTable AlphabeticDataTableColumnSort(DataTable dtTable)
{
//vamos a extraer todos los nombres de columnas, meterlos en una lista y ordenarlo
int orden = 1;
List<stringInt> listaColumnas = new List<stringInt>();
foreach (DataColumn dc in dtTable.Columns)
{
stringInt columna = new stringInt();
columna.Nombre = dc.Caption;
if ((dc.Caption != "Problema") && (dc.Caption != "Nombre")) columna.orden = 1;
else columna.orden = 0;
listaColumnas.Insert(0,columna);
}
listaColumnas.Sort(delegate(stringInt si1, stringInt si2) { return si1.Nombre.CompareTo(si2.Nombre); });
// ahora lo tenemos ordenado por nombre de columna
foreach (stringInt si in listaColumnas)
{
// si el orden es igual a 1 vamos incrementando
if (si.orden != 0)
{
si.orden = orden;
orden++;
}
}
listaColumnas.Sort(delegate(stringInt si1, stringInt si2) { return si1.orden.CompareTo(si2.orden); });
// tenemos la matriz con el orden de las columnas, ahora vamos a trasladarlo al datatable
foreach(stringInt si in listaColumnas)
dtTable.Columns[si.Nombre].SetOrdinal(si.orden);
return dtTable;
}

var columnArray = new DataColumn[table.Columns.Count];
table.Columns.CopyTo(columnArray, 0);
var ordinal = -1;
foreach (var orderedColumn in columnArray.OrderBy(c => c.ColumnName))
orderedColumn.SetOrdinal(++ordinal);

You'll probably need to implement your IComparer<T>, as "natural" order would be: Col0, Col1, Col3, Col43 and Col6. ("4" comes before "6")

Here's a combination of the preceding answers. Use the built in Sort() method of a List or an Array of strings to sort a list of the column names, then use the DataColumn.SetOrdinal() method to rearrange your DataTable's columns to match the sorted list.
List<string> columnNames = new List<string>();
foreach (DataColumn col in table.Columns)
{
columnNames.Add(col.ColumnName);
}
columnNames.Sort();
int i = 0;
foreach (string name in columnNames)
{
table.Columns[name].SetOrdinal(i);
i++;
}
(Where "table" is the name of your DataTable.)