ADO.NET 3.5 Cookbook, 2nd Edition

4.4. Finding Rows in a DataTable or DataView

Problem

You need to find rows meeting certain criteria in a DataTable or DataView.

Solution

Choose from the three techniques shown in the solution to find data in the table meeting user-specified criteria.

The solution creates a DataTable containing data from the Person.Contact table in AdventureWorks. The solution uses three different techniques—the DataRowCollection.Find() method, the DataView.Find() method, and the DataView.FindRows() method—to find rows.

The C# code in Program.cs in project FindRows is shown in Example 4-4.

Example 4-4. File: Program.cs for FindRows solution

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

namespace FindRows
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string sqlConnectString = "Data Source=(local);" +
                "Integrated security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;";

            string sqlSelect = "SELECT * FROM Person.Contact";

            // Fill the DataTable with schema and data
            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
            SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(sqlSelect, sqlConnectString);
            da.FillSchema(dt, SchemaType.Source);
            da.Fill(dt);

            // Find a row matching a primary key (ContactID) value (429)
            Console.WriteLine("---Finding rows using DataTable.Rows.Find()---"); DataRow row = dt.Rows.Find(new object[] { 429 }); if (row != null) Console.WriteLine("{0}\t{1}, {2}", row["ContactID"], row["LastName"], row["FirstName"]); else Console.WriteLine("Row not found."); Console.WriteLine(); DataView dv = dt.DefaultView; // Find a ...