将文本解析为键/值对或json

Question

I have text in the following format, I was wondering what the best approach might be to create a user object from it with the fields as its properties.

I dont know regular expressions that well and i was looking at the string methods in csharp particularly IndexOf and LastIndexOf, but i think that would be too messy as there are approximately 15 fields.

I am trying to do this in c sharp

Some characteristics:

1. The keys/fields are fixed and known beforehand, so i know that i have to look for things like title, company etc
2. The address part is single valued and following that there's some multi-valued fields
3. The multi-valued field may/maynot end with a comma (,)
4. There is one or two line brakes between the fields eg "country" is followed by 2 line brakes before we encounter "interest"

Title: Mr
    Company: abc capital
    Address1: 42 mystery lane
    Zip: 112312
    Country: Ireland
    Interest: Biking, Swimming, Hiking,
    Topic of Interest: Europe, Asia, Capital

Answer 1

This will split the the data up into key value pairs and store them in a dictionary. You may have to modify further for more requirements.

var dictionary = data
        .Split(
            new[] {"\r\n"}, 
            StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
        .Select(x => x.Split(':'))
        .ToDictionary(
            k => k[0].Trim(), 
            v => v[1].Trim());

Answer 2

I'd probably go with something like this:

    private Dictionary<string, IEnumerable<string>> ParseValues(string providedValues)
    {
        Dictionary<string, IEnumerable<string>> parsedValues = new Dictionary<string, IEnumerable<string>>();

        string[] lines = providedValues.Split(Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray(), StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); //Your newline character here might differ, being '\r', '\n', '\r\n'...

        foreach (string line in lines)
        {
            string[] lineSplit = line.Split(':');
            string key = lineSplit[0].Trim();
            IEnumerable<string> values = lineSplit[1].Split(new char[] { ',' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Select(x => x.Trim()); //Removing empty entries here will ensure you don't get an empty for the "Interest" line, where you have 'Hiking' followed by a comma, followed by nothing else
            parsedValues.Add(key, values);
        }

        return parsedValues;
    }

or if you subscribe to the notion that readability and maintainability are not as cool as a great big chain of calls:

    private static Dictionary<string, IEnumerable<string>> ParseValues(string providedValues)
    {
        return providedValues.Split(Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray(), StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Select(x => x.Split(':')).ToDictionary(key => key[0].Trim(), value => value[1].Split(new char[]{ ','}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Select(x => x.Trim()));
    }

Answer 3

I strongly recomend getting more familiar wit regexp for those cases. Parsing "half" structured text is very easy and logic with regular exp.

for ex. this (and other following are just variants there are many ways to do it depending on what you need)

title:\s*(.*)\s+comp.*?:\s*(.*)\s+addr.*?:\s*(.*)\s+zip:\s*(.*)\s+country:\s*(.*)\s+inter.*?:\s*(.*)\s+topic.*?:\s*(.*)

gives result

1.  Mr
2.  abc capital
3.  42 mystery lane
4.  112312
5.  Ireland
6.  Biking, Swimming, Hiking,
7.  Europe, Asia, Capital

or - more open to anything:

\s(.*?):\s(.*)

parses your input into nice groups like this:

Match 1
1.  Title
2.  Mr
Match 2
1.  Company
2.  abc capital
Match 3
1.  Address1
2.  42 mystery lane
Match 4
1.  Zip
2.  112312
Match 5
1.  Country
2.  Ireland
Match 6
1.  Interest
2.  Biking, Swimming, Hiking,
Match 7
1.  Topic of Interest
2.  Europe, Asia, Capital

I am not familiar with c# (and its dialect of regexp), I just wanted do awake your interest ...