Initializing of objects with data from text files

Question

I have 2 classes, one "Bicycle" and one "User". The first one has the following attributes:

private readonly int codeB;
private string name_parking_station;
int km_made;

and the second one:

private string name;
private int codeB;
private int utilization_duration;

Both classes have constructors with parameters and getters/setters. My question is: how do I instantiate objects from both classes with data from text files for which I've created? And also, how do I add them to 2 different ListView-s?

Answer 1

Do you have control over the text file format? If so, you can use out of the box serialization. You could also build your own custom serializer . That said, you may need to rethink your readonly property as this will not serialize.

From MSDN for standard XML Serialization:

MySerializableClass myObject;
// Construct an instance of the XmlSerializer with the type
// of object that is being deserialized.
XmlSerializer mySerializer = 
new XmlSerializer(typeof(MySerializableClass));
// To read the file, create a FileStream.
FileStream myFileStream = 
new FileStream("myFileName.xml", FileMode.Open);
// Call the Deserialize method and cast to the object type.
myObject = (MySerializableClass) mySerializer.Deserialize(myFileStream);

Answer 2

If your Bicycle lines don't contain those '//' parts, just your data, it's easy to create Bicycle objects by reading the file line by line and process the lines like this:

// let your class have an appropriate creator
internal Bicycle(int codeB, string name_parking_station, int km_made)
{
    this.codeB = codeB;
    this.name_parking_station = name_parking_station;
    this.km_made = km_made;
}

// In your line reader loop:
// lineRead contains the current line
var lineParts = lineRead.Split(' ').Where(item => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(item)).ToArray();        

// lineParts now should contain 3 strings

if(lineParts.Length == 3)
{
    var bicycle = new Bicycle(int.Parse(lineParts[0]), lineParts[1], int.Parse(lineParts[2]));
    // add your new object to a collection of Bicycle objects
}

Data validation is left out to keep things simple. I suggest you use int.TryParse(). Let me know if my assumption about the line format is not correct. How exactly would you like to present your Bicycle objects in a ListView?