Surinder's Blog

Creating A Comma Delimited String

A little while back I needed to create a comma-delimited string to parse into my SQL Query. My first attempt in creating my comma-delimited string involved using a StringBuilder class and appending a comma at the end of each of my values via a loop. However, I found that my application would error when parsing my comma-delimited string into my SQL query due to the fact a comma was added to the end of my string.

After some research on the MSDN website to solve my problem I found a solution and it was simpler than I thought. The .NET Framework already has a class called CommaDelimitedStringCollection and it is pretty simple to use as the following example shows:

using System.Configuration;
public partial class CommaPage : System.Web.UI.Page 
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //Create a collection to parse to CommaDelimitedStringCollection class
        List<string> cars = new List<string>();
        cars.Add("Volvo");
        cars.Add("VW");
        cars.Add("BMW");
        cars.Add("Ford");
        
        //Create instance of CommaDelimitedStringCollection
        CommaDelimitedStringCollection commaCollection 
        = new CommaDelimitedStringCollection() ;
        
        //Iterate through cars collection and add to commaCollection
        foreach (string item in cars)
        {
            commaCollection.Add(item);
        }
        
        //Read out list of values
        Response.Write(commaCollection.ToString());     
    }
}

The output of the example above would be: "Volvo, VW, BMW, Ford".

So pretty much the .NET Framework's CommaDelimitedStringCollection class did all the work for me.

Nice one!