Find the datatype of Field from DataReader object

Question

I have following query:

SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("Select employee_id,            lastname, firstname from Employees", conn);  // Execute reader SqlDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader(); 

Suppose I want to know the datatype of field employee_id. How do I determine this using the SqlDataReader?

Answer 1

reader.GetFieldType(int ordinal)

will return the .NET type of the field, while:

reader.GetDataTypeName(int ordinal)

will return a string representing the data type of the field in the data source (e.g. varchar). GetFieldType is likely to be more useful to you given the use case you describe