Get data in a .dbf file using c#

Question

How can I get the data in a .dbf file using c#??

What I want to do is to read the data in each row (same column) to further process them.

Thanks.

Tbh, I am no idea. Now, I can just count the number of row in the .dbf file — user1484319, Jul 06 '12 at 06:26

Habib · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-22T17:47:20.933

23

You may create a connection string to dbf file, then using OleDb, you can populate a dataset, something like:

string constr = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=directoryPath;Extended Properties=dBASE IV;User ID=Admin;Password=;";
using (OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(constr))
{
    var sql = "select * from " + fileName;
    OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
    con.Open();
    DataSet ds = new DataSet(); ;
    OleDbDataAdapter da = new OleDbDataAdapter(cmd);
    da.Fill(ds);
}

Later you can use the ds.Tables[0] for further processing.

You may also check this article Load a DBF into a DataTable

edited Oct 22 '20 at 17:47

answered Jul 06 '12 at 06:29

Habib

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Thanks a lot. I can do what I wanted now! – user1484319 Jul 06 '12 at 07:10
2

You should use `directoryPath` instead of `yourfilepath` to avoid misleading... or use specific example, such as: `c:\folder` – Jaider Aug 04 '15 at 20:56
is it possible to get specific row data? like i will pass row index and i should get that specific row data – Muneem Habib Nov 11 '15 at 12:17
It is good solution but I found out that oledb of version 4 cannot read files with name longer than 8 characters, it says that object could not be found... – JayDee Oct 22 '20 at 09:12

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 24 '19 at 21:23

6

I found out the accepted answer didn't work for me, as the .dbf files I'm working with are nested in a hierarchy of directories that makes the paths rather long, which, sadly, cause the OleDbCommand object to throw.

I found a neat little library that only needs a file path to work. Here's a little sample adapted from the examples on its GitHub page:

var file = "C:\\Path\\To\\File.dbf";
using (var dbfDataReader = new DbfDataReader(file))
{
    while (dbfDataReader.Read())
    {
        var foo = Convert.ToString(dbfDataReader["FOO"]);
        var bar = Convert.ToInt32(dbfDataReader["BAR"]);
    }
}

answered Jul 24 '19 at 21:23

Alexis Leclerc

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Hi, I had no luck with this API. Did u run it from 32 or 64 bit OS? – user1912383 Dec 25 '19 at 18:48
3

This library did work for me out of the box. https://github.com/henck/dBASE.NET – user1912383 Dec 25 '19 at 19:36

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 07 '23 at 21:20

For 64 bit systems I used the Microsoft ACE OLEDB 12.0 data provider, for that provider to work you have to install Microsoft's Access Database Engine 2010

So it looks a lot like the accepted answer but with the provider changed:

string constr = "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=c:\folder;Extended Properties=dBASE IV;User ID=Admin;";

using (OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(constr))
{
    var sql = "select * from " + fileName;
    OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
    con.Open();
    DataSet ds = new DataSet();
    OleDbDataAdapter da = new OleDbDataAdapter(cmd);
    da.Fill(ds);
}

Get data in a .dbf file using c#

3 Answers3

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