MySql MySqlDataReader Documentation?

Question

I need to use MySql inside of a C# application - so far, I am having mixed results.

I can connect and issue the commands just fine, however, I am having real issues processing the output and results.

I can't seem to find firm and good documentation. The only official documentation I can seem to find is here - http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/es/connector-net-examples-mysqldatareader.html

My biggest problem is that I just can't understand the basics...

while (Reader.Read())

The documentation just doesn't really go in to any details on how this works.

After I have done the above, I have seen a few different examples, and I can pull the data in the following ways

Console.WriteLine(Reader[0] + " - " + Reader[1]);

or

for (int i = 0; i < Reader.FieldCount; i++)
    Console.WriteLine(Reader.GetValue(i).ToString() + ",");

However, I can't seem to find documentation that covers either and do not fully understand what is happening.

At the moment, I do not want specific code examples, I would just ideally like a link to some solid and good documentation or (/preferably in addition) an explanation on what Reader.Read is doing and the two other code examples.

Answer 1

you can read the documentation of the .NET IDataReader and it's pretty much all you need to start.

you use code like the following:

Console.WriteLine(Reader[0] + " - " + Reader[1]);

if you already know that what you need is in the first and second column of the query and you use the for loop approach if you want to show / use all columns without knowing how many columns you get from the query. Usually in a real world application you write queries and stored procedure which select only some fields (not use SELECT *...) so you know exactly the position of which columns you are dealing with.