Question

I’m writing some helper functions that take a SqlDataReader and process the results. Now normally you’d structure the loop like so:

while(reader.read()){
    // Read fields
}

But I my be passing the function a reader which is already positioned on a row, and in this case I want it to process the current row. The code above will only output the entire result set if read() had not been called prior to invoking the function.

I want the function to do something like this:

if(!reader._dataReady)
    rowExists = reader.read() // Read 
while(rowExists){
    // read fields
    rowExists = reader.read()
}

_dataReady is an actual member of SqlDataReader and seems to do what I need, however it’s private! Surely there’s a way to determine if the reader is positioned on an actual row, short of trying to read the field and catching the exception.

Answer 1

why not just subclass SqlDataReader, and create Read() method? I have it in all my projects, now:

public class SafeDataReader : IDataReader, SqlDataReader
{
    public IDataReader reader {get;set;}
    public int GetInt32(string aFieldName, int aDefault);
    public int? GetInt32Nullable(string aFieldName);
    .... 
}