Question

I have a stored procedure which returns whether a student is locked or not:

RETURN @isLocked

I execute this stored procedure like:

    public int IsStudentLocked(string studentName, int lockoutTime)
    {
        SqlConnection connObj = new SqlConnection();
        connObj.ConnectionString = Util.StudentDataInsert();
        connObj.Open();

        SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand("uspCheckLockout", connObj);

        comm.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

        comm.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Studentname", studentName));
        comm.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@LockoutTime", lockoutTime));

        comm.ExecuteNonQuery();
        connObj.Close();

        //How can I return the @isLocked value below?
        return ((int)(@isLocked));

    }

Answer 1

To use the RETURN statement in T-SQL (which can ONLY return integer values), you have to add a parameter to retrieve it:

public int IsStudentLocked(string studentName, int lockoutTime)
{
    SqlConnection connObj = new SqlConnection();
    connObj.ConnectionString = Util.StudentDataInsert();
    connObj.Open();

    SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand("uspCheckLockout", connObj);

    comm.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

    comm.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Studentname", studentName));
    comm.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@LockoutTime", lockoutTime));

    var returnParam = new SqlParameter
    {
        ParameterName = "@return",
        Direction = ParameterDirection.ReturnValue
    };

    comm.Parameters.Add(returnParam);

    comm.ExecuteNonQuery();

    var isLocked = (int)returnParam.Value;
    connObj.Close();

    return isLocked;

}

However, this is kinda messy (IMO). Usually what I do in this case is to SELECT the value that I want as the last statement in my stored procedure. Then I use ExecuteScalar on the command object to retrieve the value instead of ExecuteNonQuery.

Proc:

... SQL ...

SELECT @isLocked

Method:

public int IsStudentLocked(string studentName, int lockoutTime)
{
    using(SqlConnection connObj = new SqlConnection())
    {
        connObj.ConnectionString = Util.StudentDataInsert();
        connObj.Open();

        SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand("uspCheckLockout", connObj);

        comm.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

        comm.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Studentname", studentName));
        comm.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@LockoutTime", lockoutTime));

        return (int)comm.ExecuteScalar();
    }
}