ADO.NET 3.5 Cookbook, 2nd Edition

2.15. Accessing Data Values in a DataRow Array

Problem

You need to access the values in a DataRow array.

Solution

The solution shows five ways to access the data in a DataRow array:

• Using a column ordinal.

• Using a column name.

• Using the strongly typed accessor Field<T> with a column ordinal.

• Using the strongly typed accessor Field<T> with a column name.

• Using the strongly typed accessor Field<T> with a column name and a data row version.

The solution creates and fills a DataTable from the Person.Contact table in AdventureWorks. The DataTable is copied to a DataRow array. The value of the FirstName field for the third row is output to the console using each of the five techniques.

The C# code in Program.cs in the project RetrieveValuesDataRowArray is shown in Example 2-15.

Example 2-15. File: Program.cs for RetrieveValuesDataRowArray solution

using System; using System.Data; using System.Data.SqlClient; namespace RetrieveValuesDataRowArray { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { string sqlConnectString = "Data Source=(local);" + "Integrated security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;"; string sqlSelect = "SELECT ContactID, FirstName, LastName FROM Person.Contact " + "WHERE ContactID BETWEEN 10 AND 13"; // Create a data adapter SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(sqlSelect, sqlConnectString); // Fill a DataTable using DataAdapter DataTable dt = new DataTable(); da.Fill(dt); // Create and fill the DataRow array DataRow[] dra = new DataRow[dt.Rows.Count]; dt.Rows.CopyTo(dra, 0); ...