Question

My Users table has a field called Admin which is tinyint(1). 1 for admin, 0 for normal user.

I want to set a session variable when users log in that is either true or false depending on if they’re admin or not.

if ((int)Reader["Admin"] == 0)
{
    HttpContext.Current.Session["Admin"] = false;
}
else
{
    HttpContext.Current.Session["Admin"] = true;
}

Reader is a SqlDataReader. The code produces the following error:

System.InvalidCastException: Specified cast is not valid.

How can I properly cast Reader["Admin"] to an int?

Answer 1

That’s because tinyint gets turned into a System.Byte which can’t be explicitly cast to an System.Int32

You will have to use Convert.ToInt32(Byte)