Question

In a C# 2.0 I have a list of fields and a list of values (stored as strings), a table name, and an ODBC Connection.

I need to get the data types of the fields that are on that table, so I know how to generate my sql.

What’s the best way to get that information from what I’ve got?

My only idea is to do a SELECT TOP 0 * FROM @TableName in a data adapter, get back a dataset, and iterate through the list of field names against the datacolumn’s in the datatable.

Is there any better way to go about this?

Answer 1

You’re best option is to query your datbases system tables like Nick Beradi mentioned. If that’s not an option for whatever reason, you can do something like this:

using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(myConnectionString))             {                 using (SqlDataAdapter adapter = new SqlDataAdapter('SELECT * from MyTable', conn))                 {                     DataTable table = new DataTable();                     adapter.FillSchema(table, SchemaType.Mapped);                     //at this point, table will have no rows, but will have all the columns of which you can get their datatypes                 }             }