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Checking to see if a column exists in a data reader

Asked 2009-07-30T13:26:15.327
49

Is there a way to see if a field exists in an IDataReader-based object w/o just checking for an IndexOutOfRangeException?

In essence, I have a method that takes an IDataReader-based object and creates a strongly-typed list of the records. In 1 instance, one data reader has a field that others do not. I don't really want to rewrite all of the queries that feed this method to include some form of this field if I don't have to. The only way I have been able to figure out how to do it so far is to throw the 1 unique field into a try/catch block as shown below.

try
{
    tmp.OptionalField = reader["optionalfield"].ToString();
}
catch (IndexOutOfRangeException ex)
{
    //do nothing
}

Is there a cleaner way short of adding the "optional field" to the other queries or copying the loading method so 1 version uses the optional field and the other doesn't?

I'm in the 2.0 framework also.

c# idatareader
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1 Answer

8

This should work, try this:

private static bool ColumnExists(SqlDataReader reader, string columnName)
        {
            using (var schemaTable = reader.GetSchemaTable())
            {
                if (schemaTable != null)
                    schemaTable.DefaultView.RowFilter = String.Format("ColumnName= '{0}'", columnName);

                return schemaTable != null && (schemaTable.DefaultView.Count > 0);
            }
        }
answered 2011-10-13T09:56:52.320

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