Question

I have a console application that extracts data from a SQL table to a flat file. How can I get each column type and length and then use the lenght of each column to padright(length) to get the spaces at the end of each field. Here is what I have right now that does not include this functionality.

Thanks

{
                var destination = args[0];
                var command = string.Format("Select * from {0}", Validator.Check(args[1]));
                var connectionstring = string.Format("Data Source={0}; Initial Catalog=dbname;Integrated Security=SSPI;", args[2]);

            var helper = new SqlHelper(command, CommandType.Text, connectionstring);

            using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(destination))
            using (IDataReader reader = helper.ExecuteReader())
            {
                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    Object[] values = new Object[reader.FieldCount];
                    int fieldCount = reader.GetValues(values);

                    for (int i = 0; i < fieldCount; i++)
                        writer.Write(values[i].ToString().PadRight(513));

                    writer.WriteLine();
                }

                writer.Close();
            }

Answer 1

IDataReader offers a GetSchemaTable() method which provides a ColumnSize attribute (this varies by the underlying provider – the SQL Server version is here).