Split String Into Array of Chunks

Here is a little function I needed to use today for spliting a string into an array of strings of a given length rather than by a particular character. I ran into a situation where the database columns I wanted to insert some text into were split over a number of columns eg “DescriptionLine1”, “DescriptionLine2”, “DescriptionLine3”.

Through the magic of extension methods I can split the string into chunks using this code.

var splitItemDescription = item.Product.Description.SplitIntoChunks(40);

Here is the code for the extension method, written in C#.

 public static string[] SplitIntoChunks(this string toSplit, int chunkSize)
 {
      int stringLength = toSplit.Length;
 
      int chunksRequired = (int)Math.Ceiling((decimal)stringLength / (decimal)chunkSize);
      var stringArray = new string[chunksRequired];
 
      int lengthRemaining = stringLength;
 
      for (int i = 0; i < chunksRequired; i++)
      {
          int lengthToUse = Math.Min(lengthRemaining, chunkSize);
          int startIndex = chunkSize * i;
          stringArray[i] = toSplit.Substring(startIndex, lengthToUse);
             
          lengthRemaining = lengthRemaining - lengthToUse;
      }
             
      return stringArray;
 }

The method takes into account strings of which the length is not a factor of the chunk size being used by using what is remaing of the string for the last element of the array.