[Help] Reading and Sorting Text from a .txt

[rayne58]

Okay so I am very new to visual basic I am currently using VB 2010 I know that this is not the correct forum but I figured it was the closest to it since there is no VB 2010.

Anyways I am making a program for my Dad's company that can keep track of inventory so I need to store the info in a .txt and load it up etc. I currently am using a stream writer to write to the text and I got that down pat I am just having troubles loading it back up and putting the info in specific text boxes aka sorting or parsing? the information. I have looked at several tutorials and the problem is that I just simply don't know what I am looking at I've been tinkering with it for a couple hours now with no luck so I hope you guys could help me out .

Here is my current code. It is kind of useless because I have tried so many methods I thought maybe I could use a ReadAll function have it go to a string and parse from there hoping it would have been easier but it has not worked out for me so far.

Imports System.IO

Public Class FormPartList
    Dim fileReader As System.IO.StreamReader
    Dim Path As String = "c:\testfolder1\test.txt"
    Dim StrStorage As String

    Dim StrTest As String
    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click


        If File.Exists(Path) Then
            Using tr As TextReader = New StreamReader(Path)

                StrStorage = tr.ReadToEnd()
                
            End Using
        End If

        TextBox1.Text = StrStorage

    End Sub
End Class

This was just for testing purposes to see if I could get the reading to go the current code does read the text file and TextBox1.text displays all of the information in the text file (test.txt)

***NEW ITEM**1
254-2
Drawing Number: 254-2
Part Name: Mikes Part
Material: Aluminum
Finish: Brushed
Price: 50.00
Invoice: 323
Shipping: 654-256
Quantity: 80
Purchase Order: 956

^This above is just the output in test.txt and what will eventually need to get sorted into respective text/list boxes

Thank you in advance I'm hoping someone could help me out here

[si_the_geek]

Welcome to VBForums

Thread moved from the 'VB6 and Earlier' forum to the 'VB.Net' (VB2002 and later) forum

[rayne58]

haha ty for the moving stupid question lol is VB 2010 VB.net??

[si_the_geek]

Yes, as implied by my post and the forum description, VB 2002 and later (which includes VB 2010) are all VB.Net

[.paul.]

try this. it reads your textfile, discards the first 2 lines (let me know if that's wrong), + splits the next 9 lines on the ": " + puts the second part of those lines in individual textboxes:

Public Class Form1
 
    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim lines() As String = IO.File.ReadAllLines("c:\testfolder1\test.txt")
        Dim textboxes() As TextBox = {TextBox1, TextBox2, TextBox3, TextBox4, TextBox5, TextBox6, TextBox7, TextBox8, TextBox9}
        Array.ForEach(textboxes, Sub(tb) tb.Text = lines(2 + Array.IndexOf(textboxes, tb)).Split(New String() {": "}, StringSplitOptions.None)(1))
    End Sub
 
End Class

[stanav]

If you are to use a text file as a way of storing tabular data, you at least should pick the appropriate format such as csv or tab delimited where each text line represents a record and the commas or the tabs are field separators.
However, for a program to be used in real business (your Dad's company), I strongly advice the use of a database.