Question

I am using an array to hold the results of an SQLite query, at the moment I am using a two dimensional table to do this.

The problem that I have is that I have to manually specify the size of one of the indexes before the array can be used but it feels like a waste as I have no real knowledge of how many rows will be returned. I do use a property which allows me to retrieve the amount of columns that are present which is used in the arrays initialisation.

Example:

using (SQLiteDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
       results = new object[10,dr.FieldCount];

       while (dr.Read())
       {
            jIterator++;

            for (int i = 0; i < dr.FieldCount; i++)
            {
                    results[jIterator, i] = dr.GetValue(i);
            }
       }
}
//I know there are a few count bugs

Example Storage:

I simply add the data to the array for as long as the while loop returns true, in this instance I set the first index to 10 as I already know how many elements are in the database and 10 will be more than enough.

How would I go about changing the array so it’s size can be dynamic, Is this even possible based on the way I am getting the database results?

Answer 1

You should not be using an array, you should be using a dynamically-sized container like List<T>. Or, better yet, you could use something like the ADO.NET DataTable, since this is exactly what it’s designed to store, and using a DbDataAdapter will avoid having to repeat the same IDataReader code all over the place.