Extract an excel sheet row to an array

Question

I need to extract a row from an excel file and store it in an array. I have written the following code. But this seems not a good code as the execution time will increase drastically as the number of columns will increase. Is there any better way?

public static System.Array eEPlueExtractOneRowDataAgainstTSAndTCIDFromAnExcelSheet(string fullExcelFilePath, string excelSheetName, string testScenarioId, string testCaseId)
    {
        //Define variables
        System.Array myArray = null;

        //Define the excel file
        FileInfo desiredExcelFile = new FileInfo(fullExcelFilePath);


        //Manipulate Excel file using EPPlus
        ExcelPackage excelPkg = new ExcelPackage(desiredExcelFile);
        ExcelWorksheet workSheet = excelPkg.Workbook.Worksheets[excelSheetName];
        int totalRows = workSheet.Dimension.End.Row;
        int totalColums = workSheet.Dimension.End.Column;
        Console.WriteLine("Total Rows & Colums - " + totalRows + ":" + totalColums);
        Console.WriteLine("");


        for (int i = 1; i <= totalRows; i++)
        {
            if ( (workSheet.Cells[i, 1].Value.ToString() == testScenarioId) && (workSheet.Cells[i, 2].Value.ToString() == testCaseId) )
            {
                //Console.Write("Desired Row is: " + i);
                myArray = new string[totalColums];
                for (int j = 1; j < totalColums; j++)
                {
                    myArray.SetValue(workSheet.Cells[i, j].Value.ToString(), (j - 1));
                }
            }
        }


        return myArray;
    }

I dont want to do it using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel. I have to use EPPlus

Answer 1

There is not much you can do, except bailing out early when you have found your row and maybe prevent creating too many strings in the if statement:

for (int i = 1; i <= totalRows; i++)
{
    if (testScenarioId.Equals(workSheet.Cells[i, 1].Value) && 
        testCaseId.Equals(workSheet.Cells[i, 2].Value) )
    {
        //Console.Write("Desired Row is: " + i);
        myArray = new string[totalColums];
        for (int j = 1; j < totalColums; j++)
        {
            myArray.SetValue(workSheet.Cells[i, j].Value.ToString(), (j - 1));
        }
        // stop iterating the for loop
        break;
    }
}

If the values in either column1 or column2 are sorted you implement a BinarySearch but if the data doesn't come sorted and you can't keep the sorted result stored somewhere it is useless to sort it first.