Check for column name in a SqlDataReader object

Question

How do I check to see if a column exists in a SqlDataReader object? In my data access layer, I have create a method that builds the same object for multiple stored procedures calls. One of the stored procedures has an additional column that is not used by the other stored procedures. I want to modified the method to accommodate for every scenario.

My application is written in C#.

Answer 1

public static class DataRecordExtensions
{
    public static bool HasColumn(this IDataRecord dr, string columnName)
    {
        for (int i=0; i < dr.FieldCount; i++)
        {
            if (dr.GetName(i).Equals(columnName, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
                return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

Using Exceptions for control logic like in some other answers is considered bad practice and has performance costs. It also sends false positives to the profiler of # exceptions thrown and god help anyone setting their debugger to break on exceptions thrown.

GetSchemaTable() is also another suggestion in many answers. This would not be a preffered way of checking for a field's existance as it is not implemented in all versions (it's abstract and throws NotSupportedException in some versions of dotnetcore). GetSchemaTable is also overkill performance wise as it's a pretty heavy duty function if you check out the source.

Looping through the fields can have a small performance hit if you use it a lot and you may want to consider caching the results.

Answer 2

The correct code is:

public static bool HasColumn(DbDataReader Reader, string ColumnName) { 
    foreach (DataRow row in Reader.GetSchemaTable().Rows) { 
        if (row["ColumnName"].ToString() == ColumnName) 
            return true; 
    } //Still here? Column not found. 
    return false; 
}

Answer 3

In one line, use this after your DataReader retrieval:

var fieldNames = Enumerable.Range(0, dr.FieldCount).Select(i => dr.GetName(i)).ToArray();

Then,

if (fieldNames.Contains("myField"))
{
    var myFieldValue = dr["myField"];
    ...

Edit

Much more efficient one-liner that does not requires to load the schema:

var exists = Enumerable.Range(0, dr.FieldCount).Any(i => string.Equals(dr.GetName(i), fieldName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));

Answer 4

I think your best bet is to call GetOrdinal("columnName") on your DataReader up front, and catch an IndexOutOfRangeException in case the column isn't present.

In fact, let's make an extension method:

public static bool HasColumn(this IDataRecord r, string columnName)
{
    try
    {
        return r.GetOrdinal(columnName) >= 0;
    }
    catch (IndexOutOfRangeException)
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Edit

Ok, this post is starting to garner a few down-votes lately, and I can't delete it because it's the accepted answer, so I'm going to update it and (I hope) try to justify the use of exception handling as control flow.

The other way of achieving this, as posted by Chad Grant, is to loop through each field in the DataReader and do a case-insensitive comparison for the field name you're looking for. This will work really well, and truthfully will probably perform better than my method above. Certainly I would never use the method above inside a loop where performace was an issue.

I can think of one situation in which the try/GetOrdinal/catch method will work where the loop doesn't. It is, however, a completely hypothetical situation right now so it's a very flimsy justification. Regardless, bear with me and see what you think.

Imagine a database that allowed you to "alias" columns within a table. Imagine that I could define a table with a column called "EmployeeName" but also give it an alias of "EmpName", and doing a select for either name would return the data in that column. With me so far?

Now imagine that there's an ADO.NET provider for that database, and they've coded up an IDataReader implementation for it which takes column aliases into account.

Now, dr.GetName(i) (as used in Chad's answer) can only return a single string, so it has to return only one of the "aliases" on a column. However, GetOrdinal("EmpName") could use the internal implementation of this provider's fields to check each column's alias for the name you're looking for.

In this hypothetical "aliased columns" situation, the try/GetOrdinal/catch method would be the only way to be sure that you're checking for every variation of a column's name in the resultset.

Flimsy? Sure. But worth a thought. Honestly I'd much rather an "official" HasColumn method on IDataRecord.

Answer 5

Here is a working sample for Jasmin's idea:

var cols = r.GetSchemaTable().Rows.Cast<DataRow>().Select
    (row => row["ColumnName"] as string).ToList(); 

if (cols.Contains("the column name"))
{

}

Answer 6

This works for me:

bool hasColumnName = reader.GetSchemaTable().AsEnumerable().Any(c => c["ColumnName"] == "YOUR_COLUMN_NAME");

Answer 7

The following is simple and worked for me:

 bool hasMyColumn = (reader.GetSchemaTable().Select("ColumnName = 'MyColumnName'").Count() == 1);

Answer 8

I wrote this for Visual Basic users:

Protected Function HasColumnAndValue(ByRef reader As IDataReader, ByVal columnName As String) As Boolean
    For i As Integer = 0 To reader.FieldCount - 1
        If reader.GetName(i).Equals(columnName) Then
            Return Not IsDBNull(reader(columnName))
        End If
    Next

    Return False
End Function

I think this is more powerful and the usage is:

If HasColumnAndValue(reader, "ID_USER") Then
    Me.UserID = reader.GetDecimal(reader.GetOrdinal("ID_USER")).ToString()
End If

Answer 9

If you read the question, Michael asked about DataReader, not DataRecord folks. Get your objects right.

Using a r.GetSchemaTable().Columns.Contains(field) on a DataRecord does work, but it returns BS columns (see screenshot below.)

To see if a data column exists AND contains data in a DataReader, use the following extensions:

public static class DataReaderExtensions
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Checks if a column's value is DBNull
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="dataReader">The data reader</param>
    /// <param name="columnName">The column name</param>
    /// <returns>A bool indicating if the column's value is DBNull</returns>
    public static bool IsDBNull(this IDataReader dataReader, string columnName)
    {
        return dataReader[columnName] == DBNull.Value;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Checks if a column exists in a data reader
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="dataReader">The data reader</param>
    /// <param name="columnName">The column name</param>
    /// <returns>A bool indicating the column exists</returns>
    public static bool ContainsColumn(this IDataReader dataReader, string columnName)
    {
        /// See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/373230/check-for-column-name-in-a-sqldatareader-object/7248381#7248381
        try
        {
            return dataReader.GetOrdinal(columnName) >= 0;
        }
        catch (IndexOutOfRangeException)
        {
            return false;
        }
    }
}

Usage:

    public static bool CanCreate(SqlDataReader dataReader)
    {
        return dataReader.ContainsColumn("RoleTemplateId") 
            && !dataReader.IsDBNull("RoleTemplateId");
    }

---

Calling r.GetSchemaTable().Columns on a DataReader returns BS columns:

Answer 10

TLDR:

There are lots of answers with claims about performance and bad practice, so I clarify that here.

The exception route is faster for higher numbers of returned columns, the loop route is faster for lower number of columns, and the crossover point is around 11 columns. Scroll to the bottom to see a graph and test code.

Full answer:

The code for some of the top answers work, but there is an underlying debate here for the "better" answer based on the acceptance of exception handling in logic and its related performance.

To clear that away, I do not believe there is much guidance regarding catching exceptions. Microsoft does have some guidance regarding throwing exceptions. There they do state:

Do not use exceptions for the normal flow of control, if possible.

The first note is the leniency of "if possible". More importantly, the description gives this context:

framework designers should design APIs so users can write code that does not throw exceptions

That means, if you are writing an API, that might be consumed by somebody else, give them the ability to navigate an exception without a try/catch. For example, provide a TryParse with your exception-throwing Parse method. Nowhere does this say though that you shouldn't catch an exception.

Further, as another user points out, catches have always allowed filtering by type and somewhat recently allow further filtering via the when clause. This seems like a waste of language features if we're not supposed to be using them.

It can be said that there is some cost for a thrown exception, and that cost may impact performance in a heavy loop. However, it can also be said that the cost of an exception is going to be negligible in a "connected application". Actual cost was investigated over a decade ago: How expensive are exceptions in C#?

In other words, the cost of a connection and query of a database is likely to dwarf that of a thrown exception.

All that aside, I wanted to determine which method truly is faster. As expected there is no concrete answer.

Any code that loops over the columns becomes slower as the number of columns increase. It can also be said that any code that relies on exceptions will slow depending on the rate in which the query fails to be found.

Taking the answers of both Chad Grant and Matt Hamilton, I ran both methods with up to 20 columns and up to a 50% error rate (the OP indicated he was using this two test between different stored procedures, so I assumed as few as two).

Here are the results, plotted with LINQPad:

The zigzags here are fault rates (column not found) within each column count.

Over narrower result sets, looping is a good choice. However, the GetOrdinal/Exception method is not nearly as sensitive to number of columns and begins to outperform the looping method right around 11 columns.

That said, I don't really have a preference performance wise as 11 columns sounds reasonable as an average number of columns returned over an entire application. In either case we're talking about fractions of a millisecond here.

However, from a code simplicity aspect, and alias support, I'd probably go with the GetOrdinal route.

Here is the test in LINQPad form. Feel free to repost with your own method:

void Main()
{
    var loopResults = new List<Results>();
    var exceptionResults = new List<Results>();
    var totalRuns = 10000;
    for (var colCount = 1; colCount < 20; colCount++)
    {
        using (var conn = new SqlConnection(@"Data Source=(localdb)\MSSQLLocalDb;Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=True;"))
        {
            conn.Open();

            //create a dummy table where we can control the total columns
            var columns = String.Join(",",
                (new int[colCount]).Select((item, i) => $"'{i}' as col{i}")
            );
            var sql = $"select {columns} into #dummyTable";
            var cmd = new SqlCommand(sql,conn);
            cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

            var cmd2 = new SqlCommand("select * from #dummyTable", conn);

            var reader = cmd2.ExecuteReader();
            reader.Read();

            Func<Func<IDataRecord, String, Boolean>, List<Results>> test = funcToTest =>
            {
                var results = new List<Results>();
                Random r = new Random();
                for (var faultRate = 0.1; faultRate <= 0.5; faultRate += 0.1)
                {
                    Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
                    stopwatch.Start();
                    var faultCount=0;
                    for (var testRun = 0; testRun < totalRuns; testRun++)
                    {
                        if (r.NextDouble() <= faultRate)
                        {
                            faultCount++;
                            if(funcToTest(reader, "colDNE"))
                                throw new ApplicationException("Should have thrown false");
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            for (var col = 0; col < colCount; col++)
                            {
                                if(!funcToTest(reader, $"col{col}"))
                                    throw new ApplicationException("Should have thrown true");
                            }
                        }
                    }
                    stopwatch.Stop();
                    results.Add(new UserQuery.Results{
                        ColumnCount = colCount,
                        TargetNotFoundRate = faultRate,
                        NotFoundRate = faultCount * 1.0f / totalRuns,
                        TotalTime=stopwatch.Elapsed
                    });
                }
                return results;
            };
            loopResults.AddRange(test(HasColumnLoop));

            exceptionResults.AddRange(test(HasColumnException));

        }

    }
    "Loop".Dump();
    loopResults.Dump();

    "Exception".Dump();
    exceptionResults.Dump();

    var combinedResults = loopResults.Join(exceptionResults,l => l.ResultKey, e=> e.ResultKey, (l, e) => new{ResultKey = l.ResultKey, LoopResult=l.TotalTime, ExceptionResult=e.TotalTime});
    combinedResults.Dump();
    combinedResults
        .Chart(r => r.ResultKey, r => r.LoopResult.Milliseconds * 1.0 / totalRuns, LINQPad.Util.SeriesType.Line)
        .AddYSeries(r => r.ExceptionResult.Milliseconds * 1.0 / totalRuns, LINQPad.Util.SeriesType.Line)
        .Dump();
}
public static bool HasColumnLoop(IDataRecord dr, string columnName)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < dr.FieldCount; i++)
    {
        if (dr.GetName(i).Equals(columnName, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
            return true;
    }
    return false;
}

public static bool HasColumnException(IDataRecord r, string columnName)
{
    try
    {
        return r.GetOrdinal(columnName) >= 0;
    }
    catch (IndexOutOfRangeException)
    {
        return false;
    }
}

public class Results
{
    public double NotFoundRate { get; set; }
    public double TargetNotFoundRate { get; set; }
    public int ColumnCount { get; set; }
    public double ResultKey {get => ColumnCount + TargetNotFoundRate;}
    public TimeSpan TotalTime { get; set; }


}

Answer 11

Hashtable ht = new Hashtable();

Hashtable CreateColumnHash(SqlDataReader dr)
{
    ht = new Hashtable();
    for (int i = 0; i < dr.FieldCount; i++)
    {
        ht.Add(dr.GetName(i), dr.GetName(i));
    }
    return ht;
}

bool ValidateColumn(string ColumnName)
{
    return ht.Contains(ColumnName);
}

Answer 12

Here is a one-liner LINQ version of the accepted answer:

Enumerable.Range(0, reader.FieldCount).Any(i => reader.GetName(i) == "COLUMN_NAME_GOES_HERE")

Answer 13

Here is the solution from Jasmine in one line... (one more, though simple!):

reader.GetSchemaTable().Select("ColumnName='MyCol'").Length > 0;

Answer 14

To keep your code robust and clean, use a single extension function, like this:

C#

public static class Extensions
{
    public static bool HasColumn(this SqlDataReader r, string columnName)
    {
        return !string.IsNullOrEmpty(columnName) && r.FieldCount > 0 && Enumerable.Range(0, r.FieldCount).Select((i) => r.GetName(i)).Contains(columnName, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
    }
}

VB:

Public Module Extensions

    <Extension()>
    Public Function HasColumn(r As SqlDataReader, columnName As String) As Boolean

        Return Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(columnName) AndAlso r.FieldCount > 0 AndAlso Enumerable.Range(0, r.FieldCount).Select(Function(i) r.GetName(i)).Contains(columnName, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)

    End Function

End Module

Answer 15

This code corrects the issues that Levitikon had with their code: (adapted from: [1]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.datatablereader.getschematable.aspx)

public List<string> GetColumnNames(SqlDataReader r)
{
    List<string> ColumnNames = new List<string>();
    DataTable schemaTable = r.GetSchemaTable();
    DataRow row = schemaTable.Rows[0];
    foreach (DataColumn col in schemaTable.Columns)
    {
        if (col.ColumnName == "ColumnName") 
        { 
            ColumnNames.Add(row[col.Ordinal].ToString()); 
            break; 
        }
    }
    return ColumnNames;
}

The reason for getting all of those useless column names and not the name of the column from your table... Is because your are getting the name of schema column (i.e. the column names for the Schema table)

NOTE: this seems to only return the name of the first column...

EDIT: corrected code that returns the name of all columns, but you cannot use a SqlDataReader to do it

public List<string> ExecuteColumnNamesReader(string command, List<SqlParameter> Params)
{
    List<string> ColumnNames = new List<string>();
    SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter();
    string connection = ""; // your sql connection string
    SqlCommand sqlComm = new SqlCommand(command, connection);
    foreach (SqlParameter p in Params) { sqlComm.Parameters.Add(p); }
    da.SelectCommand = sqlComm;
    DataTable dt = new DataTable();
    da.Fill(dt);
    DataRow row = dt.Rows[0];
    for (int ordinal = 0; ordinal < dt.Columns.Count; ordinal++)
    {
        string column_name = dt.Columns[ordinal].ColumnName;
        ColumnNames.Add(column_name);
    }
    return ColumnNames; // you can then call .Contains("name") on the returned collection
}

Answer 16

In your particular situation (all procedures has the same columns except one which has an additional one column), it will be better and faster to check the reader's FieldCount property to distinguish between them.

const int NormalColCount = .....
if(reader.FieldCount > NormalColCount)
{
    // Do something special
}

You can also (for performance reasons) mix this solution with the solution iterating solution.

Answer 17

Neither did I get GetSchemaTable to work, until I found this way.

Basically I do this:

Dim myView As DataView = dr.GetSchemaTable().DefaultView
myView.RowFilter = "ColumnName = 'ColumnToBeChecked'"

If myView.Count > 0 AndAlso dr.GetOrdinal("ColumnToBeChecked") <> -1 Then
  obj.ColumnToBeChecked = ColumnFromDb(dr, "ColumnToBeChecked")
End If

Answer 18

My data access class needs to be backward compatible, so I might be trying to access a column in a release where it doesn't exist in the database yet. We have some rather large data sets being returned so I'm not a big fan of an extension method that has to iterate the DataReader column collection for each property.

I have a utility class that creates a private list of columns and then has a generic method that attempts to resolve a value based on a column name and output parameter type.

private List<string> _lstString;

public void GetValueByParameter<T>(IDataReader dr, string parameterName, out T returnValue)
{
    returnValue = default(T);

    if (!_lstString.Contains(parameterName))
    {
        Logger.Instance.LogVerbose(this, "missing parameter: " + parameterName);
        return;
    }

    try
    {
        if (dr[parameterName] != null && [parameterName] != DBNull.Value)
            returnValue = (T)dr[parameterName];
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Logger.Instance.LogException(this, ex);
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Reset the global list of columns to reflect the fields in the IDataReader
/// </summary>
/// <param name="dr">The IDataReader being acted upon</param>
/// <param name="NextResult">Advances IDataReader to next result</param>
public void ResetSchemaTable(IDataReader dr, bool nextResult)
{
    if (nextResult)
        dr.NextResult();

    _lstString = new List<string>();

    using (DataTable dataTableSchema = dr.GetSchemaTable())
    {
        if (dataTableSchema != null)
        {
            foreach (DataRow row in dataTableSchema.Rows)
            {
                _lstString.Add(row[dataTableSchema.Columns["ColumnName"]].ToString());
            }
        }
    }
}

Then I can just call my code like so

using (var dr = ExecuteReader(databaseCommand))
{
    int? outInt;
    string outString;

    Utility.ResetSchemaTable(dr, false);        
    while (dr.Read())
    {
        Utility.GetValueByParameter(dr, "SomeColumn", out outInt);
        if (outInt.HasValue) myIntField = outInt.Value;
    }

    Utility.ResetSchemaTable(dr, true);
    while (dr.Read())
    {
        Utility.GetValueByParameter(dr, "AnotherColumn", out outString);
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(outString)) myIntField = outString;
    }
}

Answer 19

public static bool DataViewColumnExists(DataView dv, string columnName)
{
    return DataTableColumnExists(dv.Table, columnName);
}

public static bool DataTableColumnExists(DataTable dt, string columnName)
{
    string DebugTrace = "Utils::DataTableColumnExists(" + dt.ToString() + ")";
    try
    {
        return dt.Columns.Contains(columnName);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        throw new MyExceptionHandler(ex, DebugTrace);
    }
}

Columns.Contains is case-insensitive btw.

Answer 20

The key to the whole problem is here:

if (-1 == index) {
    throw ADP.IndexOutOfRange(fieldName);
}

If the referenced three lines (currently lines 72, 73, and 74) are taken out, then you can easily check for -1 in order to determine if the column doesn't exist.

The only way around this while ensuring native performance is to use a Reflection based implementation, like the following:

Usings:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Compilation; // I'm not sure what the .NET Core equivalent to BuildManager.cs

The Reflection based extension method:

/// Gets the column ordinal, given the name of the column.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="reader"></param>
/// <param name="name">The name of the column.</param>
/// <returns> The zero-based column ordinal. -1 if the column does not exist.</returns>
public static int GetOrdinalSoft(this SqlDataReader reader, string name)
{
    try
    {
        // Note that "Statistics" will not be accounted for in this implemenation
        // If you have SqlConnection.StatisticsEnabled set to true (the default is false), you probably don't want to use this method
        // All of the following logic is inspired by the actual implementation of the framework:
        // https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#System.Data/fx/src/data/System/Data/SqlClient/SqlDataReader.cs,d66096b6f57cac74
        if (name == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("fieldName");

        Type sqlDataReaderType = typeof(SqlDataReader);
        object fieldNameLookup = sqlDataReaderType.GetField("_fieldNameLookup", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).GetValue(reader);
        Type fieldNameLookupType;
        if (fieldNameLookup == null)
        {
            MethodInfo checkMetaDataIsReady = sqlDataReaderType.GetRuntimeMethods().First(x => x.Name == "CheckMetaDataIsReady" && x.GetParameters().Length == 0);
            checkMetaDataIsReady.Invoke(reader, null);
            fieldNameLookupType = BuildManager.GetType("System.Data.ProviderBase.FieldNameLookup", true, false);
            ConstructorInfo ctor = fieldNameLookupType.GetConstructor(new[] { typeof(SqlDataReader), typeof(int) });
            fieldNameLookup = ctor.Invoke(new object[] { reader, sqlDataReaderType.GetField("_defaultLCID", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).GetValue(reader) });
        }
        else
            fieldNameLookupType = fieldNameLookup.GetType();

        MethodInfo indexOf = fieldNameLookupType.GetMethod("IndexOf", BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance, null, new Type[] { typeof(string) }, null);

        return (int)indexOf.Invoke(fieldNameLookup, new object[] { name });
    }
    catch
    {
        // .NET Implemenation might have changed, revert back to the classic solution.
        if (reader.FieldCount > 11) // Performance observation by b_levitt
        {
            try
            {
                return reader.GetOrdinal(name);
            }
            catch
            {
                return -1;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            var exists = Enumerable.Range(0, reader.FieldCount).Any(i => string.Equals(reader.GetName(i), name, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
            if (exists)
                return reader.GetOrdinal(name);
            else
                return -1;
        }
    }
}

Answer 21

I would recommend using try{} catch{} for this simple issue. However, I would not recommend handling exception in catch.

try 
{
  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(reader["Name"].ToString())) 
  {
    name = reader["Name"].ToString();
  }
}
catch
{
  //Do nothing
}

Answer 22

This is a pretty old thread, but I wanted to provide my two cents.

The challenge with most of the proposed solutions is that it requires you to enumerate over all fields every time for every row for every column you're checking.

Others are using the GetSchemaTable method which is not globally supported.

Personally, I have no issue with throwing and catching exceptions to check if a field exists. In fact, I think it's probably the most straightforward solution from a programming perspective and the easiest to debug and create an extension for. I've noticed no negative performance hits on swallowing exceptions except where there is some other transaction involved or weird rollback logic.

Implementation using a try-catch block

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

public class MyModel {
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public int UnknownColumn { get; set; }
}


public IEnumerable<MyModel> ReadData(SqlCommand command) {
    using (SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader()) {
        try {
            while (reader.Read()) {
                // init the row
                MyModel row = new MyModel();

                // bind the fields
                row.ID = reader.IfDBNull("ID", row.ID);
                row.UnknownColumn = reader.IfDBNull("UnknownColumn", row.UnknownColumn);

                // return the row and move forward
                yield return row;
            }
        } finally {
            // technically the disposer should handle this for you
            if (!reader.IsClosed) reader.Close();
        }
    }
}

// I use a variant of this class everywhere I go to help simplify data binding
public static class IDataReaderExtensions {
    // clearly separate name to ensure I don't accidentally use the wrong method
    public static T IfDBNull<T>(this IDataReader reader, string name, T defaultValue) {
        T value;
        try {
            // attempt to read the value
            // will throw IndexOutOfRangeException if not available
            object objValue = reader[name];

            // the value returned from SQL is NULL
            if (Convert.IsDBNull(objValue)) {
                // use the default value
                objValue = defaultValue;
            }
            else if (typeof(T) == typeof(char)) {
                // chars are returned from SQL as strings
                string strValue = Convert.ToString(objValue);

                if (strValue.Length > 0) objValue = strValue[0];
                else objValue = defaultValue;
            }

            value = (T)objValue;
        } catch (IndexOutOfRangeException) {
            // field does not exist
            value = @defaultValue;
        } catch (InvalidCastException, ex) {
            // The type we are attempting to bind to is not the same as the type returned from the database
            // Personally, I want to know the field name that has the problem
            throw new InvalidCastException(name, ex);
        }

        return value;
    }

    // clearly separate name to ensure I don't accidentally use the wrong method
    // just overloads the other method so I don't need to pass in a default
    public static T IfDBNull<T>(this IDataReader reader, string name) {
        return IfDBNull<T>(reader, name, default(T));
    }
}

If you want to avoid exception handling, I'd recommend saving your results to a HashSet<string> when you initialize your reader, then checking back to it for the columns you want. Alternatively for a micro-optimization, you can implement your columns as a Dictionary<string, int> to prevent a duplicate resolution from Name to ordinal by the SqlDataReader object.

Implementation using HashSet<string>

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

public class MyModel {
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public int UnknownColumn { get; set; }
}

public IEnumerable<MyModel> ReadData(SqlCommand command) {
    using (SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader()) {
        try {
            // first read
            if (reader.Read()) {
                // use whatever *IgnoreCase comparer that you're comfortable with
                HashSet<string> columns = new HashSet<string>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

                // init the columns HashSet<string, int>
                for (int i = 0; i < reader.FieldCount; i++) {
                    string fieldName = reader.GetName(i);
                    columns.Add(fieldName);
                }

                // implemented as a do/while since we already read the first row
                do {
                    // init a new instance of your class
                    MyModel row = new MyModel();

                    // check if column exists
                    if (columns.Contains("ID") &&
                        // ensure the value is not DBNull
                        !Convert.IsDBNull(reader["ID"])) {
                        // bind value
                        row.ID = (int)reader["ID"];
                    }

                    // check if column exists
                    if (columns.Contains("UnknownColumn") &&
                        // ensure the value is not DBNull
                        !Convert.IsDBNull(reader["UnknownColumn"])) {
                        // bind value
                        row.UnknownColumn = (int)reader["UnknownColumn"];
                    }

                    // return the row and move forward
                    yield return row;
                } while (reader.Read());
            }
        } finally {
            // technically the disposer should handle this for you
            if (!reader.IsClosed) reader.Close();
        }
    }
}

Implementation using Dictionary<string, int>

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

public class MyModel {
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public int UnknownColumn { get; set; }
}

public IEnumerable<MyModel> ReadData(SqlCommand command) {
    using (SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader()) {
        try {
            // first read
            if (reader.Read()) {
                // use whatever *IgnoreCase comparer that you're comfortable with
                Dictionary<string, int> columns = new Dictionary<string, int>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

                // init the columns Dictionary<string, int>
                for (int i = 0; i < reader.FieldCount; i++) {
                    string fieldName = reader.GetName(i);
                    columns[fieldName] = i;
                }

                // implemented as a do/while since we already read the first row
                do {
                    // init a new instance of your class
                    MyModel row = new MyModel();

                    // stores the resolved ordinal from your dictionary
                    int ordinal;

                    // check if column exists
                    if (columns.TryGetValue("ID", out ordinal) &&
                        // ensure the value is not DBNull
                        !Convert.IsDBNull(reader[ordinal])) {
                        // bind value
                        row.ID = (int)reader[ordinal];
                    }

                    // check if column exists
                    if (columns.TryGetValue("UnknownColumn", out ordinal) &&
                        // ensure the value is not DBNull
                        !Convert.IsDBNull(reader[ordinal])) {
                        // bind value
                        row.UnknownColumn = (int)reader[ordinal];
                    }

                    // return the row and move forward
                    yield return row;
                } while (reader.Read());
            }
        } finally {
            // technically the disposer should handle this for you
            if (!reader.IsClosed) reader.Close();
        }
    }
}

Answer 23

You can also call GetSchemaTable() on your DataReader if you want the list of columns and you don't want to have to get an exception...

Answer 24

Use:

if (dr.GetSchemaTable().Columns.Contains("accounttype"))
   do something
else
   do something

It probably would not be as efficient in a loop.

Answer 25

Although there is no publicly exposed method, a method does exist in the internal class System.Data.ProviderBase.FieldNameLookup which SqlDataReader relies on.

In order to access it and get native performance, you must use the ILGenerator to create a method at runtime. The following code will give you direct access to int IndexOf(string fieldName) in the System.Data.ProviderBase.FieldNameLookup class as well as perform the book keeping that SqlDataReader.GetOrdinal()does so that there is no side effect. The generated code mirrors the existing SqlDataReader.GetOrdinal() except that it calls FieldNameLookup.IndexOf() instead of FieldNameLookup.GetOrdinal(). The GetOrdinal() method calls to the IndexOf() function and throws an exception if -1 is returned, so we bypass that behavior.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Reflection.Emit;

public static class SqlDataReaderExtensions {

   private delegate int IndexOfDelegate(SqlDataReader reader, string name);
   private static IndexOfDelegate IndexOf;

   public static int GetColumnIndex(this SqlDataReader reader, string name) {
      return name == null ? -1 : IndexOf(reader, name);
   }

   public static bool ContainsColumn(this SqlDataReader reader, string name) {
      return name != null && IndexOf(reader, name) >= 0;
   }

   static SqlDataReaderExtensions() {
      Type typeSqlDataReader = typeof(SqlDataReader);
      Type typeSqlStatistics = typeSqlDataReader.Assembly.GetType("System.Data.SqlClient.SqlStatistics", true);
      Type typeFieldNameLookup = typeSqlDataReader.Assembly.GetType("System.Data.ProviderBase.FieldNameLookup", true);

      BindingFlags staticflags = BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | BindingFlags.Static;
      BindingFlags instflags = BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | BindingFlags.Instance;

      DynamicMethod dynmethod = new DynamicMethod("SqlDataReader_IndexOf", typeof(int), new Type[2]{ typeSqlDataReader, typeof(string) }, true);
      ILGenerator gen = dynmethod.GetILGenerator();
      gen.DeclareLocal(typeSqlStatistics);
      gen.DeclareLocal(typeof(int));

      // SqlStatistics statistics = (SqlStatistics) null;
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldnull);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc_0);
      // try {
      gen.BeginExceptionBlock();
      //    statistics = SqlStatistics.StartTimer(this.Statistics);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); //this
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeSqlDataReader.GetProperty("Statistics", instflags | BindingFlags.GetProperty, null, typeSqlStatistics, Type.EmptyTypes, null).GetMethod);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeSqlStatistics.GetMethod("StartTimer", staticflags | BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, new Type[] { typeSqlStatistics }, null));
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc_0); //statistics
      //    if(this._fieldNameLookup == null) {
      Label branchTarget = gen.DefineLabel();
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); //this
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, typeSqlDataReader.GetField("_fieldNameLookup", instflags | BindingFlags.GetField));
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Brtrue_S, branchTarget);
      //       this.CheckMetaDataIsReady();
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); //this
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeSqlDataReader.GetMethod("CheckMetaDataIsReady", instflags | BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, Type.EmptyTypes, null));
      //       this._fieldNameLookup = new FieldNameLookup((IDataRecord)this, this._defaultLCID);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); //this
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); //this
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); //this
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, typeSqlDataReader.GetField("_defaultLCID", instflags | BindingFlags.GetField));
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, typeFieldNameLookup.GetConstructor(instflags, null, new Type[] { typeof(IDataReader), typeof(int) }, null));
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Stfld, typeSqlDataReader.GetField("_fieldNameLookup", instflags | BindingFlags.SetField));
      //    }
      gen.MarkLabel(branchTarget);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); //this
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, typeSqlDataReader.GetField("_fieldNameLookup", instflags | BindingFlags.GetField));
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_1); //name
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeFieldNameLookup.GetMethod("IndexOf", instflags | BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, new Type[] { typeof(string) }, null));
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc_1); //int output
      Label leaveProtectedRegion = gen.DefineLabel();
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Leave_S, leaveProtectedRegion);
      // } finally {
      gen.BeginFaultBlock();
      //    SqlStatistics.StopTimer(statistics);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc_0); //statistics
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeSqlStatistics.GetMethod("StopTimer", staticflags | BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, new Type[] { typeSqlStatistics }, null));
      // }
      gen.EndExceptionBlock();
      gen.MarkLabel(leaveProtectedRegion);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc_1);
      gen.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);

      IndexOf = (IndexOfDelegate)dynmethod.CreateDelegate(typeof(IndexOfDelegate));
   }

}

Answer 26

This works to me:

public static class DataRecordExtensions
{
    public static bool HasColumn(IDataReader dataReader, string columnName)
    {
        dataReader.GetSchemaTable().DefaultView.RowFilter = $"ColumnName= '{columnName}'";
        return (dataReader.GetSchemaTable().DefaultView.Count > 0);
    }
}

Answer 27

Use:

if(Enumerable.Range(0,reader.FieldCount).Select(reader.GetName).Contains("columName"))
{
     employee.EmployeeId= Utility.ConvertReaderToLong(reader["EmployeeId"]);
}

You can get more details from Can you get the column names from a SqlDataReader?.