Question

I am using NHibernate and calling a stored procedure via a named query:

<sql-query name="SearchStuff" read-only="true" cacheable="true">
  <return class="ResultEntity" />
  EXEC [SearchStuff] ?, ?, ?    </sql-query>

Many of the stored procedure parameters are deliberately nullable – this cannot be changed.

The C#:

IQuery listQuery = this.Session.GetNamedQuery("SearchStuff");
listQuery.SetInt32(0, param1);
listQuery.SetDateTime(1, param2);
listQuery.SetString(2, param3);
IList<ResultEntity> results = listQuery.List<ResultEntity>();

Unfortunately, NHibernate does not provide any SetXyz() methods for nullable value types so I tried adding some extension methods to compensate:

public static class QueryExtensions
{
    public static void SetInt32(this IQuery query, int position, int? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetInt32(position, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(position, null);
        }
    }

    public static void SetInt32(this IQuery query, string name, int? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetInt32(name, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(name, null);
        }
    }

    public static void SetDateTime(this IQuery query, int position, DateTime? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetDateTime(position, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(position, null);
        }
    }

    public static void SetDateTime(this IQuery query, string name, DateTime? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetDateTime(name, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(name, null);
        }
    }
}

I’ve tried various versions of these but none work. The code above fails with the error:

System.ArgumentNullException : A type specific Set(position, val) should be called because the Type can not be guessed from a null value.

I also tried simply not setting the parameter but NHibernate requires every parameter to be set. I’ve tried using both positional and named versions with the same results.

Is there any way to assign null values to value typed parameters in NHibernate named queries?

Answer 1

OK, it turns out there are some overrides on SetParameter that allow the type to be set explicitly. For example:

query.SetParameter(position, null, NHibernateUtil.Int32);

The full extension methods (for Int32 and DateTime only) are now:

public static class QueryExtensions
{
    public static void SetInt32(this IQuery query, int position, int? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetInt32(position, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(position, null, NHibernateUtil.Int32);
        }
    }

    public static void SetInt32(this IQuery query, string name, int? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetInt32(name, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(name, null, NHibernateUtil.Int32);
        }
    }

    public static void SetDateTime(this IQuery query, int position, DateTime? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetDateTime(position, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(position, null, NHibernateUtil.DateTime);
        }
    }

    public static void SetDateTime(this IQuery query, string name, DateTime? val)
    {
        if (val.HasValue)
        {
            query.SetDateTime(name, val.Value);
        }
        else
        {
            query.SetParameter(name, null, NHibernateUtil.DateTime);
        }
    }
}