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

It is worth mentioning, that DBNull.Value.ToString() equals String.Empty

You can use this to your advantage:

DataRow row = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0];
string value = row["name"].ToString();

However, that only works for Strings, for everything else I would use the linq way or a extension method. For myself, I have written a little extension method that checks for DBNull and even does the casting via Convert.ChangeType(...)

int value = row.GetValueOrDefault("count");
int value = row.GetValueOrDefault("count", 15);