CsvExport

A very simple and very fast CSV-export tool for C#.

Features

1. Excel-compatible export (separator detected automatically, friendly-trimming rows and values for compatibility)
2. Escapes commas, quotes, multiline text
3. Exports dates in timezone-proof format
4. Extremely easy to use
5. NET Standard 2.0 library (compatible with both .NET Core and .NET Framework)
6. 30 times faster than CsvHelper
7. 4-times less memory usage

Benchmarks

Method	Mean	Error	StdDev	Gen0	Gen1	Allocated
😟 CsvHelper	1,300.38 us	32.043 us	1.756 us	17.5781	7.8125	114.25 KB
✅ CsvExport_Manual	31.22 us	5.750 us	0.315 us	4.7607	0.2441	29.37 KB
✅ CsvExport_Typed	52.68 us	1.453 us	0.080 us	4.7607	0.1221	29.46 KB

This benchmark is generating a 100-line CSV file with 4 columns. Check the "SpeedBenchmarks" code.

Usage examples:

Install via Nuget Install-Package CsvExport

For "manual" CSV ad-hoc generation use this:

var myExport = new CsvExport();

myExport.AddRow();
myExport["Region"] = "Los Angeles, USA";
myExport["Sales"] = 100000;
myExport["Date Opened"] = new DateTime(2003, 12, 31);

myExport.AddRow();
myExport["Region"] = "Canberra \"in\" Australia";
myExport["Sales"] = 50000;
myExport["Date Opened"] = new DateTime(2005, 1, 1, 9, 30, 0);

///ASP.NET MVC action example
return File(myExport.ExportAsMemoryStream(), "text/csv", "results.csv");

For generating CSV out of a typed List<T> of objects:

public class Foo
{
	public string Region { get; set; }
	public int Sales { get; set; }
	public DateTime DateOpened { get; set; }
}

var list = new List<Foo>
{
	new Foo { Region = "Los Angeles", Sales = 123321, DateOpened = DateTime.Now },
	new Foo { Region = "Canberra in Australia", Sales = 123321, DateOpened = DateTime.Now },
};

var myExport = new CsvExport();
myExport.AddRows(list);
string csv = myExport.Export();

Configuring is done via constructor parameters:

var myExport = new CsvExport(
	columnSeparator: ",",
	includeColumnSeparatorDefinitionPreamble: true, //Excel wants this in CSV files
	includeHeaderRow: true
);

Also, methods ExportToFile and ExportAsMemoryStream and ExportToBytes offer an optional encoding parameter.

License

The code is licensed under MIT License.

Sucessfully tested for years in production with our Jitbit Helpdesk Ticketing System