Nullable DateTime with SQLDataReader [duplicate]

Answer 1

Try this:

Make the startingDate variable nullable, like this:

DateTime? startingDate;

Now, when retrieving the value from the SqlDataReader object you need to use the IsDbNull method, which will determine if the value is NULL coming back from the database, like this:

if !reader.IsDBNull(reader.GetOrdinal("STARTINGDATE"))
{
    startingDate = reader.GetDateTime(reader.GetOrdinal("STARTINGDATE"));
}
else
{
    startingDate = null;
}

Note: I am not sure where you are assigning startingDate to the value read from the database, because it is not shown in the posted code. That is why I assigned it directly in my example, but you may need to adjust the placement of the example logic.