ADO.NET 3.5 Cookbook, 2nd Edition

1.14. Connecting to a Text File

Problem

You want to use ADO.NET to access data stored in a text file.

Solution

Use the OLE DB .NET data provider.

The solution creates and opens a connection to a text file using the OLE DB .NET data provider. Information about the connection is displayed.

The C# code in Program.cs in the project ConnectTextFile is shown in Example 1-15.

Example 1-15. File: Program.cs for ConnectTextFile solution

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;

namespace ConnectTextFile
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string connectString = "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;" +
                @"Data Source=..\..\..\;" +
                "Extended Properties=\"text;HDR=yes;FMT=Delimited\";";

            OleDb Connection connection = new OleDbConnection(connectString);
            connection.Open(  );

            // Output some connection properties to the console
            Console.WriteLine("Connection.String = {0}\n",
                connectString);
            Console.WriteLine("Connection.State = {0}",
                connection.State);
            Console.WriteLine("Connection.Provider = {0}",
                connection.Provider);
            Console.WriteLine("Connection.ServerVersion = {0}",
                connection.ServerVersion);

            connection.Close(  );

            Console.WriteLine("\nPress any key to continue.");
            Console.ReadKey(  );
        }
    }
}

The output is shown in Figure 1-15.

Figure 1-15. Output for ConnectTextFile solution

Discussion

The .NET OLE DB provider can read records from and insert records into a text file data source ...