Question

This value (row[10]) is coming from a DataRow object, from a SQL result set in T-SQL. I believe it has a type “object”. In my database, I have a value of NULL for this field for this particular record, but it’s returning an empty string in my result set, not a null value. I’d like to fix the root problem and have my result set return NULL instead of an empty string, but if that’s not possible, making this code more efficient would be just fine–meaning the 1st snippet, since it works for all 3 cases.

This works when row[10].ToString() is equal to an empty string, null or a DateTime format, but I’d like to shorten it. This is my workaround for now.

        string temp0 = row[10].ToString();
        DateTime? temp = null;
        if (temp0 == "")
        {
            temp0 = null;
        }
        if (temp0 != null)
        {
            temp = DateTime.Parse(temp0);
        }

        d.date_migrate_prod = temp == null ? null : temp;

This works for a null datetime value, an actual datetime value, but not when row[10] is equal to an empty string.

        DateTime? temp = DateTime.Parse(row[10].ToString());
        d.date_migrate_prod = temp == null ? null : temp;

Answer 1

The following should work as a shortcut:

DateTime? temp = String.IsNullOrEmpty(row[10].ToString())? null : DateTime.Parse(temp0);