c# empty string --> null?

Question

there are many times in which I have an input text ,

and if its empty ( user didnt type any text ) - i want to send to the DB query "null"

and not String.Empty. ( or "")

so i find my self doing this a lot :

var mySqlValue =  string.IsNullOrEmpty( tbCustomerId.Text)?null:tbCustomerId.Text; 

this seems ugly to me.

.net gives a lot of other solutions for the opposite scenarios :

        string.IsNullOrEmpty         string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace         myProblemVal ?? myDefultVal 

I know this can be solved by Extension methods - and i know how to do it..

but is there anything better ?

is there any intelligent code for : "if its empty -> null".

Answer 1

You can use an extension method:

public static class Extensions {     public static string NullIfWhiteSpace(this string value) {         if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value)) { return null; }         return value;     } } 

Which you could use like that:

var mySqlValue = tbCustomerId.Text.NullIfWhiteSpace(); 

I don't really know what you imagine by something better than Extension methods. How do you define "better"? Shorter? Using a special keyword? Using rarely used operators to look clever? This is already just a single method call appended to your value, which even works on null values, and the logic you need can't really be expressed in a shorter way than this. Also, I don't know of any special syntax for it.

Answer 2

but is there anything better ?

No, although I'd argue that what you describe in the question (extension methods) is absolutely fine. And as you describe in the question, in the other direction you have null-coalescing.