Make a dynamic txt file with C#

Question

1.89/5 (5 votes)

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I want to create a txt file based on certain inputs.

if statements looking at the specific cases and if true:

Output a specific paragraph or sentence into the txt file.

How can I build it so when some cases dont exist it doesn't just leave a lot of white space.

Ex: Action 3 happened to not exist in this specific document, but may in others.
text.txt output

Action 1
(action 1 multi-lined)
Action 2
Action 4
Action 5

What I have tried:

I am not sure where to go further with this. The string alone isn't enough. I would need to attatch to the next blank line available for the next string.

string text = "first sentence output"

System.IO.File.WriteAllText(@"C:\Test\Test.txt", text);

Posted 12-May-16 11:42am

Member 12520255

Updated 13-May-16 1:25am

v2

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Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-May-16 17:55pm

The whole idea seems quite bad; maybe even the idea to use file (text file or not) is already bad. It sounds pointless, it sounds awful low-tech.
If you explain your ultimate purpose, it may help to advise you something more appropriate.
—SA

George Jonsson 12-May-16 18:15pm

The only way this question makes sense is if it is homework.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-May-16 18:16pm

I'm afraid as a homework it makes even less sense. :-)
—SA

George Jonsson 12-May-16 18:22pm

I have seen some pretty weird student exercises before, but who knows.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-May-16 18:33pm

I'm not saying it's not homework, I doubt it would be reasonable homework.

Often, "weird" home assignment is not bad thing; it can really be interesting and often very useful. I'm talking about much worst things.

Here is what I mean: Recently, I wrote about my CodeProject experience. I found that, judging by a good number of student's questions, they study software engineering at "school" where the "professors" have no clue on the subject, which makes whole school pure fake. Student pays money, that's it... This is really sad...

—SA

George Jonsson 12-May-16 18:37pm

If that is the case, it is really sad.

I actually meant that the only way it makes sense to post this kind of question is if it is homework, not that the exercise itself makes sense.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-May-16 18:40pm

Sure...
—SA

It's Eddie! 13-May-16 7:27am

I'm going to be honest here. If this is what he has to do or wants to do all you can do is tell him how, and or offer any better alternatives.
- Eddie

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-May-16 8:11am

And you should understand that the inquirer needs to describe the ultimate goals, to get such advice. This is the whole purpose of these comments. This is a very general purpose, to mix up the purpose with one's views on how some problem should be fixed. "To tell him how" is then the worst possible advice.

You also need to understand the difference between "wants" and "think he wants". :-)
Not many people wants to waste time on something unreasonable. That's why we try to reveal what's really should be achieved.

—SA

It's Eddie! 13-May-16 9:58am

Oh definitely, that's not what I was implying. What I was implying that if he specifies what he needs but people on here do not appreciate the way he's doing it then it's best to either answer, give a better method, or just not reply.

I tend to see a lot of "experienced" "professional" programmers on here who like to complain that people do stuff in a bad way but are too lazy to actually show how to "actually" do it.

- Eddie

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-May-16 17:52pm

Hm... I still what you call "complain" (which is not complain at all) is much better than "just not reply". Denying to provide a solution is still a kind of help, and its better than misleading answering a question as requested. This helps people to save time and effort on not doing that "stuff in a bad way". You really need to understand that, in case of those "bad ways", "to actually show how to "actually" do it" can be evil, not helpful.

Generally, the way you mentioned "experience" in quotation mark suggests some sarcasm, as if you were highly doubtful about "real" level of understanding. Of course, some "experts" are not up to the role at all. But how do you know that? I would understand if you tried to find out the fully-fledged answers and articles of those who comment, read them and only then criticized the level of one or another expert. If you judge on the level of understanding things by just looking at comments, it looks not quite serious. When you try to judge experience, do you take into account your own level of experience? And so on...

Anyway, the only really productive way of arguing is addressing to the matter of conversation, technical/scientific/methodological problems and approaches. When I comment or answer, I address particular codes/designs/views/saying, and not personalities. And you are about to cross this line and address personalities. I'm not saying it would be the abuse, but I cannot say it's productive enough. If you want to criticize me, I would be very grateful, but only if you point out my mistakes/misconceptions, etc. But so far your criticism is, frankly, reduced to the advice "talk less". I don't see any rational grain in it.

Than you for sharing your opinions.

—SA

It's Eddie! 13-May-16 18:55pm

" Denying to provide a solution is still a kind of help"

I guess it's more of a personal taste or it depends how you look at it. To me it's a waste of time, and any time wasted is useless.

"When you try to judge experience, do you take into account your own level of experience? And so on..."

Very good point.

"But so far your criticism is, frankly, reduced to the advice "talk less". I don't see any rational grain in it."

Yeah, that would really depend on how much you'd like to spend your time telling other people they're not making any sense if you could just ignore them.

It's been a pleasure talking to you - thanks for sharing your views too.

- Eddie

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-May-16 19:04pm

Likewise.
—SA

BillWoodruff 12-May-16 23:59pm

Welcome to CodeProject ! To assist you, we need you to explain what you are trying to do in more detail. What are the sources, the "raw materials" you work with here ? What is the relationship between the text file you want to generate and those "raw materials."

2 solutions

Solution 2

I want to create a txt file based on certain inputs.

To create a text file you can use the StreamWriter Class (System.IO)[^]

if statements looking at the specific cases and if true: Output a specific paragraph or sentence into the txt file.

C#

if(SpecificCase)
{
  MyStreamWriter.WriteLine("A specific paragraph or sentence.");
  // Or if you want to look fancy
  // MyStreamWriter.Write("A specific paragraph or sentence \n");
}

How can I build it so when some cases dont exist it doesn't just leave a lot of white space.

Edit: White lines are caused by calling "WriteLine" and not adding to the new line. So, I advise you to just not call "WriteLine" or "Write" if it's empty and you don't want just an empty space.

Here's an example by using a switch statement:

C#

using(StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter("myTextFile.txt"))
{
string LineToWrite = String.Empty;
switch(SpecificCase)
{
case "Case1":
LineToWrite = "A specific message";
break;
case "Case2":
LineToWrite = "A different Message";
break;
}

sw.WriteLine(LineToWrite);
}

Edit: If you use "case default" you can basically insert any code you'd add to the "else" after a couple of "if" switches. It's the case it will always do if no other match has been found if I'm not mistaken. More information can be found at http://www.dotnetperls.com/switch[^]

While reading or writing using the stream writer be sure to use a "using statement" to make sure your StreamWriter disposes properly.

Best Regards,
- Eddie

Posted 13-May-16 1:25am

It's Eddie!

Updated 13-May-16 4:15am

v7

Comments

Simon_Whale 13-May-16 8:00am

with the Little information that you have given I would do something like this

using(StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter("myTextFile.txt"))
{
string LineToWrite = String.Empty;
switch(SpecificCase)
{
case "Case1":
LineToWrite = "A specific message";
break;
case "Case2":
LineToWrite = "A different Message";
break;
}

sw.WriteLine(LineToWrite);
}

You will possibly need to do some loop around the switch statement if you need to write more than one line to the file while it's open. There are some other things that you will need to think about. I.e. what happens when a condition is not met you dont want to write a blank line to the file. But hopefully this will give you a starting point.

It's Eddie! 13-May-16 9:59am

Ofcourse a switch statement is advised when there's only a few cases, but from OPs post I have no idea how many cases - I just assumed he meant either something specific or nothing.

Edit: Turns out I misread some of the stuff he wrote - tried to answer it the best I could.

Great example I'll add it to my post.
- Eddie

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F-ES Sitecore · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-13T01:19:00

It's hard to give an exact answer without seeing your code, but these problems are normally caused by code like this;

C#

StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();
while (true)
{
    Console.Write("> ");
    string line = Console.ReadLine();
    output.AppendLine(line);
    Console.WriteLine("Output so far");
    Console.WriteLine("-------------");
    Console.WriteLine(output.ToString());
    Console.WriteLine();
}

Here we read a line and append the input every time, so if the line is empty or spaces we get gaps in the output. The solution is to check if the text is empty before adding it to the output;

C#

StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();
while (true)
{
    Console.Write("> ");
    string line = Console.ReadLine();
    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(line))
    {
        output.AppendLine(line);
    }
    Console.WriteLine("Output so far");
    Console.WriteLine("-------------");
    Console.WriteLine(output.ToString());
    Console.WriteLine();

If that doesn't help you'll need to post your code.