Handling a DateTime DBNull

Question

I have seen many, many versions of this on SO, but none of them seem to quite work for my needs.

My data comes from a vendor database that allows null for DateTime

Answer 1

here is an example of some code i use to read Datetimes

im sure it could be written better but runs fine for me

   public DateTime? ReadNullableDateTimefromReader(string field, IDataRecord data)
    {

        var a = data[field];
        if (a != DBNull.Value)
        {
            return Convert.ToDateTime(a);
        }
        return null;
    }

    public DateTime ReadDateTimefromReader(string field, IDataRecord data)
    {
        DateTime value;
        var valueAsString = data[field].ToString();
        try
        {
            value = DateTime.Parse(valueAsString);
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            throw new Exception("Cannot read Datetime from reader");
        }

        return value;
    }