Checking for null before ToString()

Question

Here's the scenario...

if (entry.Properties["something"].Value != null)   attribs.something = entry.Properties["something"].Value.ToString(); 

While effective and working correctly, this looks ugly to me. If I don't check for a null before performing the ToString() then it throws an exception if the property was null. Is there a better way to handle this scenario?

Much appreciated!

Answer 1

Update 8 years later (wow!) to cover c# 6's null-conditional operator:

var value = maybeNull?.ToString() ?? String.Empty; 

Other approaches:

object defaultValue = "default"; attribs.something = (entry.Properties["something"].Value ?? defaultValue).ToString() 

I've also used this, which isn't terribly clever but convenient:

public static string ToSafeString(this object obj) {     return (obj ?? string.Empty).ToString(); } 

Answer 2

If you are targeting the .NET Framework 3.5, the most elegant solution would be an extension method in my opinion.

public static class ObjectExtensions {     public static string NullSafeToString(this object obj)     {         return obj != null ? obj.ToString() : String.Empty;     } } 

Then to use:

attribs.something = entry.Properties["something"].Value.NullSafeToString();