Question

I have a database field whose dataType is varBinary. Now in a gridView I want to display that data. But i am getting output:

System.Byte[]

not the value

0x2C6D1A

which is in the database.

Please help how to solve this problem.

Answer 1

You can use the BitConverter class to format your byte array for display purposes:

string forDisplay =
    "0x" + BitConverter.ToString(yourByteArray).Replace("-", string.Empty);

If you don’t want to convert directly to a string, then BitConverter has a load of methods for converting from byte arrays to various other types.

EDIT…

If you’re binding some query results directly to the GridView control then it might be easier to convert your VARBINARY column to a VARCHAR in the query itself:

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(MAX), your_varbinary_column, 1) AS for_display
FROM your_table

(Note: This type of conversion – from VARBINARY to VARCHAR in '0x1234AB' format – only works correctly in SQL Server 2008. Earlier versions of SQL Server just cast the binary data directly to character data.)