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

I wrote a generic extension method that I use in all of my projects:

public static object GetValueSafely(this System.Data.DataTable dt, string ColumnName, int index)
{
    if (typeof(T) == typeof(int))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return 0;
    }
    else if (typeof(T) == typeof(double))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return 0;
    }
    else if (typeof(T) == typeof(decimal))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return 0;
    }
    else if (typeof(T) == typeof(float))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return 0;
    }
    else if (typeof(T) == typeof(string))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return string.Empty;
    }
    else if (typeof(T) == typeof(byte))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return 0;
    }
    else if (typeof(T) == typeof(DateTime))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return DateTime.MinValue;
    }
    else if (typeof(T) == typeof(bool))
    {
        if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
            return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
        else
            return false;
    }
    if (dt.Rows[index][ColumnName] != DBNull.Value)
        return dt.Rows[index][ColumnName];
    else
        return null;
}

Usage example:

private void Example()
{
    DataTable dt = GetDataFromDb() // get data from database...
    for (int i = 0; i < dt.Rows.Count; i++)
    {
        Console.WriteLine((DateTime)dt.GetValueSafely("SomeDateColumn", i));
        Console.WriteLine((int)dt.GetValueSafely("SomeIntColumn", i));
        Console.WriteLine((string)dt.GetValueSafely("SomeStringColumn", i));
    }
}