Question

In PHP I am able to retrieve information from a db like so:

<?php
    $sql = "SELECT * FROM users";
    $result = mysql_query($sql);
    $data = array();
    while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
    {
        $data[] = $row;
    }

I am trying to acomplish the same thing in C#:

OdbcCommand cmd = new OdbcCommand("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = @id");
        cmd.Parameters.Add("@id", id);
        OdbcDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
        Dictionary<string, string> data = new Dictionary<string, string>();
        while (reader.Read())
        {
            data.Add("id", reader.GetString(0));
            data.Add("username", reader.GetString(1));
            data.Add("firstName", reader.GetString(2));
        }
        return data;

Is it possible to reference the column in the table by name without going through all this trouble?

Answer 1

You can use the OdbcDataAdapter class to populate a DataSet, which would probably be a bit simpler.