Unable to cast object of type 'System.DBNull' to type 'System.String`

Question

I got the above error in my app. Here is the original code

public string GetCustomerNumber(Guid id)
{
     string accountNumber = 
          (string)DBSqlHelperFactory.ExecuteScalar(connectionStringSplendidmyApp, 
                          CommandType.StoredProcedure, 
                          "GetCustomerNumber", 
                          new SqlParameter("@id", id));
     return accountNumber.ToString();
 }

I replaced with

public string GetCustomerNumber(Guid id)
{
   object accountNumber =  
          (object)DBSqlHelperFactory.ExecuteScalar(connectionStringSplendidCRM, 
                                CommandType.StoredProcedure, 
                                "spx_GetCustomerNumber", 
                                new SqlParameter("@id", id));
    if (accountNumber is System.DBNull)
    {
       return string.Empty;
    }
    else
    {
       return accountNumber.ToString();
    }
}

Is there a better way around this?

Answer 1

With a simple generic function you can make this very easy. Just do this:

return ConvertFromDBVal<string>(accountNumber);

using the function:

public static T ConvertFromDBVal<T>(object obj)
{
    if (obj == null || obj == DBNull.Value)
    {
        return default(T); // returns the default value for the type
    }
    else
    {
        return (T)obj;
    }
}

Answer 2

A shorter form can be used:

return (accountNumber == DBNull.Value) ? string.Empty : accountNumber.ToString()

EDIT: Haven't paid attention to ExecuteScalar. It does really return null if the field is absent in the return result. So use instead:

return (accountNumber == null) ? string.Empty : accountNumber.ToString() 

Answer 3

ExecuteScalar will return

• null if there is no result set
• otherwise the first column of the first row of the resultset, which may be DBNull.

If you know that the first column of the resultset is a string, then to cover all bases you need to check for both null and DBNull. Something like:

object accountNumber = ...ExecuteScalar(...);
return (accountNumber == null) ? String.Empty : accountNumber.ToString();

The above code relies on the fact that DBNull.ToString returns an empty string.

If accountNumber was another type (say integer), then you'd need to be more explicit:

object accountNumber = ...ExecuteScalar(...);
return (accountNumber == null || Convert.IsDBNull(accountNumber) ?     
         (int) accountNumber : 0;

If you know for sure that your resultset will always have at least one row (e.g. SELECT COUNT(*)...), then you can skip the check for null.

In your case the error message "Unable to cast object of type ‘System.DBNull’ to type ‘System.String`" indicates that the first column of your result set is a DBNUll value. This is from the cast to string on the first line:

string accountNumber = (string) ... ExecuteScalar(...);

Marc_s's comment that you don't need to check for DBNull.Value is wrong.