Question

I’ve got an object, specifically the following:

table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"].Value

If there is not property, the Value is null. If there is a property, but it is empty, the Value.toString() is "".

I would thus like to create an if-statement which caters for both eventualities. This is what I’ve done so far:

if (table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"] == null ||
    table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"].Value.ToString().Equals(""))

The problem is that if it is null, it is still checking the condition on the right-hand-side.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Thus Value is not a string, then you have to deal with all conditions:

var description = table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"];
if (description == null ||
    description.Value == null || 
    description.Value.ToString().Equals(""))
    // no value

BTW your code is not quite correct

if (table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"] == null ||
    table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"].Value.ToString().Equals(""))

Instead of checking Value for null, you are checking if table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"] is not null. Thats true. You go further, but if table.ExtendedProperties["MS_Description"].Value is null (you didn’t check that, remember?), you will get NullReferenceException on applying ToString().