Question

I’m trying to return a single row from a database:

using (connection = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["connection"]))
{
    using (command = new SqlCommand(@"select top 1 col_1, col_2 from table1", connection))
    {
        connection.Open();

        using (reader = command.ExecuteReader())
        {
            reader.Read();
            return reader["col_1"];
        }
    }
}

But I’m getting the following error message:

Compiler Error Message: CS0266: Cannot implicitly convert type ‘object’ to ‘string’. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a
cast?)
Line 90: return reader[“col_1”];

I’m sure I am making a really obvious mistake, but I can’t seem to find any single row examples, all I examples I find are for multiple returned rows using a while loop.

Answer 1

reader["col_1"] returns object.

You want something like reader.GetString(reader.GetOrdinal("col_1")).

Edit -> I just wanted to add a note here that, in addition to the concerns others have raised, a SELECT TOP without an ORDER BY can give you random results based on schema changes and/or merry-go-round scans.