What is the best way to deal with DBNull's

Question

I frequently have problems dealing with DataRows returned from SqlDataAdapters. When I try to fill in an object using code like this:

Answer 1

If you have control of the query that is returning the results, you can use ISNULL() to return non-null values like this:

SELECT 
  ISNULL(name,'') AS name
  ,ISNULL(age, 0) AS age
FROM 
  names

If your situation can tolerate these magic values to substitute for NULL, taking this approach can fix the issue through your entire app without cluttering your code.

Answer 2

Add a reference to System.Data.DataSetExtensions, that adds Linq support for querying data tables.

This would be something like:

string value = (
    from row in ds.Tables[0].Rows
    select row.Field<string>(0) ).FirstOrDefault();