CsvDataSource Component Overview

The CsvDataSource component enables data items to display data located in a CSV document, including files (*.csv, *.tsv, *.txt, and others), inline string or stream, while using little or no code. Using CsvDataSource allows you to access and display data in a report without parsing the CSV document prior to that. At run time, CsvDataSource automatically creates a stream from the provided source, returns the selected data with the provided mapping and then closes the stream.

Configuring the CsvDataSource component

Multiple formats are supported through configuring the CsvDataSource settings.

CsvDataSource configuration setting	Description
Has headers	Defines if the CsvDataSource has headers. If true the first non-comment row of the CSV document is used for field names and is not considered as data (i.e. will be omitted from the data output).
Field separators (column delimiters)	Configures the list of separators by which the document is split to fields (columns) based on a delimiter.
Record separators (row delimiters)	Configures the list of separators by which the document is split to records (rows) based on a delimiter.
Escape format	Defines how the special symbols are escaped, like field and record separators and the escape symbols themselves. For more information please check CsvDataSource Escape Formats
Quote	Configures the text qualifier if Quotes (RFC 4180 standard is applied to the CSV document) or Quotes Mixed (same as Quotes, but the escape symbol is escaped with a backslash) Escape format is used.
Comment token	By providing a comment token for the CsvDataSource comments can be supported and omitted from the data output.

CsvDataSource data format settings

Below are listed the available settings for formatting the data retrieved from the CSV document.

CsvDataSource option	Description
Consecutive field/record separators as one	Configures if consecutive field/record separators are treated as one.
Decimal separator	Configures the decimal separator when parsing numbers.
Thousand separator	Configures the thousand separator when parsing numbers.
DateTime format	A Custom Date and Time Format String which configures the format of the date and time when parsing date and time strings to DateTime data field values. A custom format string consists of one or more custom date and time format specifiers. For more information on date and time format specifiers please refer to the Custom Date and Time Format Strings MSDN article. For example, to correctly parse the string "12-30-11" to a valid DateTime you need to use the following DateTime format: "MM-dd-yy". If the date string does not conform to the specified DateTime format, the DateTime field will appear empty in the Data Preview window.
Columns	Configures the column-data type mapping.

Supported developer platforms

• .NET Framework 4.6.2 and above
• .NET 6 and above
• .NET Standard 2.0 and above