Is csv with multi tabs/sheet possible?

c# asp.net excel csv

106,342

Solution 1

CSV, as a file format, assumes one "table" of data; in Excel terms that's one sheet of a workbook. While it's just plain text, and you can interpret it any way you want, the "standard" CSV format does not support what your supervisor is thinking.

You can fudge what you want a couple of ways:

Use a different file for each sheet, with related but distinct names, like "Book1_Sheet1", "Book1_Sheet2" etc. You can then find groups of related files by the text before the first underscore. This is the easiest to implement, but requires users to schlep around multiple files per logical "workbook", and if one gets lost in the shuffle you've lost that data.
Do the above, and also "zip" the files into a single archive you can move around. You keep the pure CSV advantage of the above option, plus the convenience of having one file to move instead of several, but the downside of having to zip/unzip the archive to get to the actual files. To ease the pain, if you're in .NET 4.5 you have access to a built-in ZipFile implementation, and if you are not you can use the open-source DotNetZip or SharpZipLib, any of which will allow you to programmatically create and consume standard Windows ZIP files. You can also use the nearly universal .tar.gz (aka .tgz) combination, but your users will need either your program or a third-party compression tool like 7Zip or WinRAR to create the archive from a set of exported CSVs.
Implement a quasi-CSV format where a blank line (containing only a newline) acts as a "tab separator", and your parser would expect a new line of column headers followed by data rows in the new configuration. This variant of standard CSV may not readable by other consumers of CSVs as it doesn't adhere to the expected file format, and as such I would recommend you don't use the ".csv" extension as it will confuse and frustrate users expecting to be able to open it in other applications like spreadsheets.

Solution 2

If I try to save data in xls/xlsx, then I get multiple sheets in a workbook.

Your answer is in your question, don't use text/csv (which most certainly can not do multiple sheets, it can't even do one sheet; there's no such thing as a sheet in text/csv though there is in how some applications like Excel or Calc choose to import it into a format that does have sheets) but save it as xls, xlsx, ods or another format that does have sheets.

Both XLSX and ODS are much more complicated than text/csv, but are each probably the most straightforward of their respective sets of formats.

Solution 3

I've been using this library for a while now,

https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx

in my projects to import data and structure from formats like: xls(x), csv and xml but you can for sure save in that formats as well (all from client)!

Hope that can help you,, take a look on online demo,

http://oss.sheetjs.com/js-xlsx/

peek in source code or file an issue on GH? but I think you will have to do most coding on youre own

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Author by

hello temp9

Updated on July 19, 2022

Comments

hello temp9 almost 2 years

I am calling a web service and the data from the web service is in csv format. If I try to save data in xls/xlsx, then I get multiple sheets in a workbook. So, how can I save the data in csv with multipletab/sheets in c#.

I know csv with multiple tabs is not practical, but is there any damn way or any library to save data in csv with multiple tabs/sheet?
hello temp9 about 9 years

The data which I am getting is in CSV and I am told to keep it in csv only. Because the server might not support Excel and Office.Interop where I want to retrieve certain values.
hello temp9 about 9 years

There is no library in c#/Asp.net which can make multiple sheets ?
Joe White about 9 years

You wouldn't want to use Excel on the server anyway -- it's explicitly not designed for heavy multithreaded, non-UI use. There are plenty of libraries out there that will generate Excel files in a server environment (in pure .NET code, no external dependencies); there are plenty of good paid ones, and probably some free ones.
hello temp9 about 9 years

Is there any good and free library in .net which is free ? I do not want to use Interop
hello temp9 about 9 years

@JoeWhite And no library to convert to multiple sheets for csv ?
Jon Hanna about 9 years

You can't have multiple sheets in CSV, because CSV doesn't have sheets.
Joe White about 9 years

@hellotemp9, I don't know. You're going to have to do some research. But you do have your answer to the question you asked: CSV has no concept of sheets; use XLSX instead.
hello temp9 about 9 years

@JonHanna Thanks. But is is possible to not have any tabs in csv. My superviosr is thinking, there should be some way. Do you have any link with which I can prove it, that there is no way.
Jon Hanna about 9 years

Ask your supervisor to point to the bit in ietf.org/rfc/rfc4180.txt that shows how sheets are specified. They won't be able to, because it's not there. It's like asking how to turn the sound up on a CSV. Meanwhile, XLSX files are internally zip files of a few related XML and text files. They aren't exactly easy to build programmatically, but they aren't terribly hard either.
hello temp9 about 9 years

@JoeWhite Can you please help me on this : stackoverflow.com/questions/29613374/…
hello temp9 about 9 years

@JonHanna Can you please help me on this :stackoverflow.com/questions/29613374/…
Jon Hanna about 9 years

I haven't used ADO with excel, so I don't know what's up there, but hopefully someone will.
hello temp9 about 9 years

Thank you. Can you give me an example to implement a quasi - csv format with blank line as a seperation.
hello temp9 about 9 years

so you are telling is multi sheet csv possible?
Kresimir Pendic about 9 years

no, that thing does not exist,, csv is rough format, old format but mainly for data transport used,, no multi anything :)
hello temp9 about 9 years

This seems really good. Can you guide me on how to use this library in my visual studio ?
hello temp9 about 9 years

I want to extract csv of every file deliminated by a line and thats what this library is giving. But please help me on installing this library.
KeithS about 9 years

It's fairly straightforward; simply parse CSV lines as normal (first line is headers, then data rows matching those headers), but before parsing a data row, test to see if the line contains any non-whitespace characters. If not, then break out of the data row parsing and repeat the column header logic using a new collection to store the next sheet's data. Anything more specific than that and you'll be asking me for code you can drop in, and that's not what this site is for.