ZimLabs.TableCreator 2.1.1

ZimLabs.TableCreator

This library is not very special 😃 It takes a list of objects and creates an ASCII "table", markdown table or a CSV list. Very simple and straight forward.

Content

• Install
• Usage
• Known issues
• Changelog
  • Version 2.1.1
  • Version 2.1.0
  • Version 2.0.2
  • Version 2.0.1
  • Version 2.0.0
  • Version 1.5.0

Install

PM > Install-Package ZimLabs.TableCreator

Usage

Attributes:

internal sealed class Person
{
    [Appearance(TextAlign = TextAlign.Right, Order = 1)]
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [Appearance(Name = "First name", Order = 3)]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [Appearance(Order = 2)]
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    [Appearance(Name = "E-Mail", Order = 4)]
    public string Mail { get; set; }

    [Appearance(Ignore = true)]
    public string Gender { get; set; }

    [Appearance(Name = "Job title")]
    public string JobTitle { get; set; }

    [Appearance(Format = "yyyy-MM-dd")]
    public DateTime Birthday { get; set; }
}

Note: If not all properties have an Order value, the following order is applied:

1. occurrence in the class
2. order according to Order value

Usage of the Create / Save methods:

var personList = CreateDummyList().ToList();

// Print the complete list
Console.WriteLine("Person List");
Console.WriteLine(personList.CreateTable());

// Save the person list
personList.SaveTable("PersonList.txt");

// Print a single person
var person = personList.FirstOrDefault();

Console.WriteLine("Single person");
Console.WriteLine("Value list");
Console.WriteLine(person.CreateValueList());

Console.WriteLine("Value table");
Console.WriteLine(person.CreateValueTable());

// Save the person (as value list)
person.SaveValue("FileName.txt");

// Save the person (as table)
person.SaveValueAsTable("FileName.txt");

Console.WriteLine("Done");
Console.ReadLine();

The result:

Person List
+-------------------------------+------------+----+-------------+------------+-------------------------------+
| Job title                     | Birthday   | Id | LastName    | First name | E-Mail                        |
+-------------------------------+------------+----+-------------+------------+-------------------------------+
| Environmental Tech            | 1968-03-26 |  1 | Giblin      | Tommy      | [email protected]         |
| Teacher                       | 1952-04-24 |  2 | Puden       | Sven       | [email protected]        |
| VP Quality Control            | 1965-04-10 |  3 | Czaple      | Garvy      | [email protected]              |
| Pharmacist                    | 1986-07-23 |  4 | Mariotte    | Eryn       | [email protected]          |
| Senior Financial Analyst      | 1967-11-09 |  5 | Oiseau      | Zaccaria   | [email protected]   |
+-------------------------------+------------+----+-------------+------------+-------------------------------+

Single person
Value list
- Job title.: Environmental Tech
- Birthday..: 26/03/1968 00:00:00
- Id........: 1
- LastName..: Giblin
- First name: Tommy
- E-Mail....: [email protected]

Value table
+------------+-----------------------+
| Key        | Value                 |
+------------+-----------------------+
| Job title  | Environmental Tech    |
| Birthday   | 26/03/1968 00:00:00   |
| Id         | 1                     |
| LastName   | Giblin                |
| First name | Tommy                 |
| E-Mail     | [email protected] |
+------------+-----------------------+

For more examples take a look at the demo project.

Known issues

Currently it's possible to call the methods for a single entry with a list:

// Wrong call
personList.CreateValueList();

I'll try to fix the bug in the next version (1.5).

Since I didn't find a solution to prevent calling the method for a single value, I included a check that throws an error when trying to call the method for a single value from a list.

If you call from a list a function, which was developed only for a single value, an NotSupportedException with the following message will be thrown:

The specified type is not supported by this method. Please choose "CreateTable" or "SaveTable" instead.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Changelog

Version 2.1.1

• Option addHeader addded, with which you can decide whether the CSV content should contain a header line.
• Added classes for the various options to improve clarity (TableCreateOptions and TableCreatorListOptions).
• Appearance attribute adjusted. It is now possible to specify whether the content of a property should be encapsulate in quotation marks.

Version 2.1.0

• Fixed some bugs:
  • Custom format was not used in some cases (DataTable functions)
  • Missing null check in the list functions
• Added .NET 8 support (multiple target frameworks). Now .NET 7 and .NET 8 are supported
• Minor changes under the hood (usage of the new C# 12 features)

Version 2.0.2

• Added missing api documentation

Version 2.0.1

• Fixed a bug in the DataTable CSV generator

Version 2.0.0

🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING CHANGE 🚨🚨🚨

Between the last version and this one the runtime environment has been changed! New runtime environment is .NET 7

Other changes:

• Added the support of DataTable

Version 1.5.0

Added check function to the following methods

• CreateValueTable
• SaveValue
• SaveValueAsTable

The function checks if the given value is a list or not. If the value is a list an exception (NotSupportedException) will be thrown.

For more information see Known issues.

I also removed the documentation for the classes, because the tool I use for that doesn't seem to cope with .NET Standard, so the documentation wasn't updated anymore.