Question

I have to process a number of items of data for example

User u = NotMyObject.GetUser(100);
ProcessProperty(u.FirstName);
ProcessProperty(u.Surname);
ProcessProperty(u.Phone.Work);
ProcessProperty(u.Phone.Mobile);
...
ProcessProperty(u.Address.PostCode);

Take it that all properties are returned from GetUser(…) as string. What ProcessProperty does is, I hope, not relevant (maybe write the value to a file, for example) but it would look like:

private void ProcessProperty(string data) {
...
}

My question is given that u.Phone & likewise u.Address may be NULL how can I process the “User u” object without putting each ProcessProperty(…) call in a try/catch block?

Apologies if the formatting of the question is no good, I’m still getting the hang of posting.

Many thanks. N.

Answer 1

You could try (maybe it’s not elegant):

ProcessProperty(u.Phone == null ? null : u.Phone.Work);

and

private void ProcessProperty(string data) {
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(data)) {
        ....
    } else {
        ....
    }
}