Question

In my C# Web Application I have simple page where a user enters their first name in one textbox (named txtFirst) and their last name in another textbox (named txtLast). After they enter this information in the two textboxes, they click on a continue button which saves the data to a SQL database. My problem is trying to save these values in SQL. I have a “Value” table (columns are PersonID, AttributeID, and Value) and an “Attribute” table (columns are a primary key AttributeID and AttributeName).

In my Attribute table I have the following:

AttributeID:   AttributeName: 
    1            FirstName 
    2            LastName

My goal is to have this save in the Value table as:

PersonID:       AttributeID:             Value: 
    A                1                     FirstName Value Here
    B                2                     LastName Value Here

I know how to save the data by directly passing it into a stored procedure, but how can I have the AttributeID get assigned correctly? (Example: AttributeID = 1 for FirstName and AttributeID = 2 for LastName). Is there a way I can assign the textboxes in the application to have a specific AttributeID or even by AttributeName? Thanks so much.

It might be confusing, but the idea here is for when the button is clicked, it pulls the AttributeID associated to FirstName from the table and then saves the value and that pulled AttributeID in table “Value”. Thanks

Answer 1

I would store them in the ViewState or Session depending on what you are doing:

//Code to get the values from the database.
Session("FirstNamePersionId") = fnamePId;
Session("FirstNameAttributeId") = fnameAId;
Session("LastNamePersionId") = lnamePId;
Session("LastNamePersionId") = lnameAId;
//other code.

Then to access just use Session("FirstNamePersionId") or what ever you called the value.

I would wrap the calls to the ViewState or Session in properties to make it easier to maintain and read.

Let me know if you need an example.

Update:
To get the values from the database you can try the following.

int fNameId = -1, lNameId = -1;
SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(conString);//conString is the connection string for your DB.  This should be the same as what you use to execute the stored procedure.
SqlCommand sqlQuery = new SqlCommand("SELECT AttributeID, AttributeName FROM Attribute WHERE AttributeName IN ('FirstName','LastName')", sqlConn);
SqlDataReader sqlReader;

sqlConn.Open();
sqlReader = sqlQuery.ExecuteReader();
if (sqlReader.HasRows)
{
    while (sqlReader.Read())
    {
        if (sqlReader[1].ToString().Equals("FirstName", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            fNameId = (int)fNameId;
        }
        else if (sqlReader[1].ToString().Equals("LastName", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            lNameId = (int)fNameId;
        }
    }
}
sqlReader.Close();
sqlConn.Close();

If you want you can make a separate call for each id, but that adds a bit of processing overhead. If you do make two calls then I suggest using the same SqlConnection, though you will need to create a new command.
Accessing the results by id (as I did using sqlReader[1]) is sometimes frowned upon. I personally do not worry about it since I declare the column order in the SQL query.
This would probably be easier using LINQ2SQL.
Let me know if I made any mistakes or missed anything.