DbfSharp.Core 0.1.7

DbfSharp

Yet another DBF file reader, but this one is mine. I built it primarily to make my own life easier. I often find myself needing to quickly peek into various .dbf files, validate their structure, or just export them to something more readable like CSV or JSON.

This project is split into two main parts:

1. DbfSharp.Core: A high-performance, memory-efficient .NET library for reading DBF files.
2. DbfSharp.Console: A cross-platform .NET command-line tool built on top of the core library.

Most people will probably just use the CLI tool.

The CLI Tool: dbfsharp

This is the quick and dirty way to get stuff done. For more detailed documentation, see the DbfSharp.Console README.

Installation

It's a .NET tool, so installation is a one-liner (perhaps I'll eventually add it to a brew tap or something, but for now, this is the easiest way):

dotnet tool install -g DbfSharp

Usage

Once installed, you can call it directly from your terminal.

1. Get info about a file:

This is great for a first look. It tells you the version, number of records, encoding, and field definitions.

dbfsharp info my_data.dbf

2. Read and display data:

You can dump the contents straight to your console. It defaults to a nice table view.

# Show the first 100 records in a table
dbfsharp read my_data.dbf --limit 100

# Select specific columns
dbfsharp read my_data.dbf --fields NAME,SALARY,EMAIL

3. Export to other formats:

You can pipe the output to a file or just view it directly.

# Export the whole file to CSV
dbfsharp read my_data.dbf --format csv > data.csv

# Quietly export 10 first rows to JSON
dbfsharp read my_data.dbf --limit 10 --format json --quiet > data.json

# You can even pipe data into it from stdin
cat my_data.dbf | dbfsharp read --format tsv

Supported formats: table, csv, tsv, json, and excel. Note that for Excel, you must specify an output file with --output.

Compatibility

The library aims to support a wide range of DBF formats. Here's a summary of the tested versions.

The Core Library: DbfSharp.Core

If you need to read DBF files from your own .NET application, you can use the core library directly. It's built with performance in mind, using modern .NET features like System.IO.Pipelines and Span<T>. For more detailed documentation, see the DbfSharp.Core README.

Quick Start

Here's a basic example of how to read records.

using DbfSharp.Core;

// Open the DBF file. By default, it streams records.
using var reader = DbfReader.Open("path/to/your/data.dbf");

foreach (var record in reader.Records)
{
    // Access fields by name (case-insensitive by default)
    var name = record.GetValue<string>("NAME");
    var birthDate = record.GetValue<DateTime?>("BIRTHDATE");
    var salary = record.GetValue<decimal?>("SALARY");

    Console.WriteLine($"{name}, born {birthDate:yyyy-MM-dd}, salary: {salary:C}");

    // Or access by index for a little extra speed
    var id = record[0];
}

Configuration

You can control the reader's behavior with DbfReaderOptions.

var options = new DbfReaderOptions
{
    // Load all records into memory for faster random access
    LoadOnOpen = true,

    // Don't throw an error if a .dbt or .fpt file is missing
    IgnoreMissingMemoFile = true,

    // Override the auto-detected encoding
    Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("windows-1252")
};

using var reader = DbfReader.Open("data.dbf", options);

// Now you can access records by index because LoadOnOpen = true
var firstRecord = reader[0];
var lastRecord = reader[reader.Count - 1];

Why?

Honestly, I've used other DBF libraries and tools, but I wanted something that was:

• Written in modern C# with a focus on performance.
• Worked seamlessly across Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Had a simple, scriptable CLI that I could use in my daily workflow.
• Was easy to extend if I ever came across a weird, non-standard DBF file.

This tool solves my problem. Maybe it will solve yours too.