Dynamic Excel Reader

By Zube Pierre Basali

Introduction

This is a simple console app to read data dynamically on an unique excel sheet.

How does it works

The app read the first rows as headers and store them.

Then the other subsequent filled rows are read and store to a Key-Value Pair Dictionnary with the headers

• (header = Key, rowValue = Value ).

An sqlite database is then created and store the key-value pairs as Json strings.
Then the data is retrieved from the database, put into a table, and displayed to the user.

How to use it

Three data samples are given in this folder.

To change wich data must be read, change the value under the comments in the Controller.cs file, in the GetFilePath() function.

No inputs are needed, the app just asks to press enter before printing the results and before leaving.

Thought and Remarks

• This is a simple solution for basics Excel sheets.
• Other methods were tried to achieve this, mainily trying to create a type dynamically on runtime, But a few problems prevent this solution to work with my knowledge:
  • The type creation is possible but it couldn't be read by EntityFramework.
  • The type is usable for other purpose but it's not practical and efficient to use
    both at coding time and at runtime.
  • Two methods were tried to create the type properties:
    • Create each property in a type creator
    • Put them in a json and try to create them from the json

Resources

• Excel Sample Data for Practice or Training Example: Link
• Excel Reader in C#: Link