Extension Method for SqlDataReader?

Question

We have run a conversion tool on an old project which came from VB6.

We're substituting OLEDB with Ado.Net, and RecordSets with SqlDataReaders.

But the converted code always does a rs.Fields['FirstName'] reference, which I guess would be rs['FirstName'] with the database reader (where rs is now q SqlDataReader.

Instead of going through all the code, is there a way I could create an extension method on SqlDataReader, which would then make use of "Fields['FieldName']"?

This is my current attempt:

public static class SqlUtils
    {
        public static object Fields(this SqlDataReader dataReader, string fieldname)
        {
            return dataReader[fieldname];
        }
    }

However, this works with:

Console.WriteLine(reader.Fields("First").ToString());

I need to handle:

Console.WriteLine(reader.Fields["First"].ToString());

Note, [], not ().

Answer 1

Extension methods are actually just static methods. Since there is no 'static indexer' you cannot have an extension method that uses indexer syntax.

Answer 2

this static indexer works just dandy...

public static string GetDRItem(this IDataReader dr, string colName)
{
    return dr[colName].ToString();
}