Question

How do you get the column names from a db?

Currently, I’m interacting with the db through linq-sql using an ado.net entity model. I’ve searched through StackOverflow and I got a few helpful posts but nothing I’ve tried has worked.

Like take this post:

How do I return the column names of a LINQ entity

I tried the responses from Conrad Frix but they didn’t work. I’m not exactly sure what he means by a ‘Datacontext’ anyway. Is that Entity?

    AttributeMappingSource mappping = new System.Data.Linq.Mapping.AttributeMappingSource();
    var model = mappping.GetModel(typeof (AdoModelEntities));
    var table = model.GetTable(typeof (TableName));

    var qFields= from fields in table.RowType.DataMembers
            where fields.IsPersistent == true
            select fields;

    foreach (var field in qFields)
        Console.WriteLine(field.Name);

This doesn’t work because table is null

Answer 1

You can do something like this…

Object LinqObject = Activator.CreateInstance(tableName, null);

//For each field in the database (or property in Linq object)
foreach (PropertyInfo pi in LinqObject.GetType().GetProperties())
{     
     String name = pi.Name;
}

LinqObject would be the table object you are trying to get names on. It doesn’t matter how you create it. That’s a way to create it if you just have the string name.

Assuming your .dbml had a table named “Order” it would work just as well to do:

Object LinqObject = new Order();

You don’t have to declare the reference to the table object as an Object either obviously.