After ExecuteScalar: Object reference not set etc

Question

What code I should add to accept null from WHERE statement.

{
    int numApprovals = 0;
    string sql = \"SELECT COUNT(Type) AS OpenforApproval \" +
                


        

Answer 1

The problem is probably the direct cast to int. This throws an exception if cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null. You need to decide what to return in that case. For this example I am returning 0 if cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null

using (cn = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString()))
{
    cn.Open();
    using (cmd = new SqlCommand(sql, cn))
    {
        cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
        object result = cmd.ExecuteScalar();
        numApprovals = result == null ? 0 : (int)result;
    }
}

return numApprovals;