GridX Export Engine

Overview

The GridX Export Engine provides a pluggable, extensible export architecture that supports multiple output formats from any BeepGridPro instance. Three formats are built-in (CSV, JSON, HTML), while Excel and PDF are provided as stubs that can be replaced by external plugins discovered at runtime via assembly scanning.

The engine is accessible via grid.ExportEngine (an instance of GridExportEngine). It supports output to file, Stream, or string, and respects grouping, filtering, column visibility, and selection state.

GridExportEngine

The GridExportEngine class manages the registry of exporters and coordinates the export pipeline. It provides methods for registration, querying available formats, and performing exports.

Export Formats

IGridExporter Interface

All exporters implement IGridExporter. Custom exporters can be created by implementing this contract and registering via Register().

public interface IGridExporter
{
    string Format { get; }
    string Description { get; }
    string FileExtension { get; }
    bool IsAvailable { get; }

    void Export(BeepGridPro grid, Stream stream, ExportOptions options);
}

Built-in Exporters

GridCsvExporter

Produces RFC 4180-compliant CSV. Honors ExportOptions.Delimiter (default comma), ExportOptions.IncludeHeaders (first row = column names), and ExportOptions.QuoteAllStrings. Uses double-quote escaping for values containing the delimiter, quotes, or newlines.

GridJsonExporter

Produces a valid JSON array of objects. Uses Newtonsoft.Json internally. Each row becomes a JSON object with column names as property names. Honors ExportOptions.IndentSpaces for pretty-printing (default 2). Supports ExportOptions.IncludeHiddenColumns and ExportOptions.NullValueRepresentation.

GridHtmlExporter

Produces a complete self-contained HTML document with embedded CSS styling. The table inherits the grid's visual theme colors. Includes a <thead> section, striped rows, and responsive styling. Honors ExportOptions.IncludeGroupHeaders to render group header rows as <tr class="group-header">.

Plugin Discovery

DiscoverPlugins() scans all assemblies loaded in the current AppDomain for types implementing IGridExporter. When a matching exporter is found, it replaces the corresponding stub in the registry. This enables drop-in Excel/PDF support:

grid.ExportEngine.DiscoverPlugins();

bool excelReady = grid.ExportEngine.IsAvailable("Excel");
if (excelReady)
{
    grid.ExportEngine.ExportToFile("Excel", @"C:\reports\data.xlsx");
}

The discovery method uses Assembly.GetTypes() wrapped in try/catch to handle ReflectionTypeLoadException — if an assembly fails to load its types (e.g., missing dependencies), it is silently skipped. This ensures that plugin discovery never crashes the host application.

ExportOptions

ExportOptions provides fine-grained control over export output. An instance is passed to each Export* method; if null, sensible defaults are used.

Examples

Export to CSV File

var engine = grid.ExportEngine;

engine.ExportToFile("Csv", @"C:\exports\data.csv", new ExportOptions
{
    Delimiter = ",",
    IncludeHeaders = true,
    NullValueRepresentation = "N/A"
});

Export to JSON String

var engine = grid.ExportEngine;

string json = engine.ExportToString("Json", new ExportOptions
{
    IndentSpaces = 4,
    IncludeHiddenColumns = false,
    DateFormat = "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss"
});

File.WriteAllText(@"C:\exports\data.json", json);

Stream Export for Web Response

using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
    grid.ExportEngine.ExportToStream("Csv", ms);
    ms.Position = 0;

    var response = HttpContext.Current.Response;
    response.ContentType = "text/csv";
    response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=data.csv");
    ms.CopyTo(response.OutputStream);
}

Plugin Discovery + Excel Export

var engine = grid.ExportEngine;
engine.DiscoverPlugins();

if (engine.IsRegistered("Excel") && engine.IsAvailable("Excel"))
{
    engine.ExportToFile("Excel", @"C:\reports\summary.xlsx", new ExportOptions
    {
        DateFormat = "MM/dd/yyyy",
        NullValueRepresentation = "-"
    });
}
else
{
    engine.ExportToFile("Csv", @"C:\reports\summary.csv");
}