I am not a great software developer. I’m OK, and I do know how to use Google and Stack Overflow well. Maybe my best skill is wording searches well? In any case, I’ve had to write a bit of C# lately to build an app for my Zero Downtime talk.
In no way am I an expert on this stuff, but I learned a few things while working on the client. One of these was how to get to/from various datatypes. Not a complex skill, but since I do it rarely, I decided to do a quick blog.
Creating Strings
I actually remembered how to take a number and convert it to a string. The ToString() method works on many items. In my case, I used some variables as numerics, often a zero or one, but I wanted to display these in a textbox. To do that, I needed something like this:
txtRandom.Text = num.ToString();
Easy enough to write, but other items were more complex.
Strings to Int
I only had to go the reverse way a few times, but found there was no ToInt32() or similar. I was hoping for one, but a little google query helped me realize this is what I needed?
cmd.Parameters.Add("@year", SqlDbType.Int).Value = Convert.ToInt32(txtYear.Text);
In this case, I was adding an integer parameter from a value in a textbox, which was a strong. The Convert class has a ToInt32() method I used.
String to Date
In one demo I move to a date as a parameter, again getting a value from a string textbox. This was yet another method. In this case, there is a DateTime class with a Parse() method. I used it as such:
cmd.Parameters.Add("@start", SqlDbType.DateTime).Value = DateTime.Parse(txtStart.Text);
This worked great.
NULLs
One other item I needed was passing a NULL value to a proc. Part of zero downtime deployments involve staging your changes, and that sometimes means altering which parameters you use and sending in other values. In this case, I found a DBNull class with a value property. I passed null parameter values like this:
cmd.Parameters.Add("@year", SqlDbType.Int).Value = DBNull.Value;
More
There are obviously other conversions, but I’ll learn those as I need them. I know how to phrase a quick question and read through StackOverflow to find code I need and modify it. I’m good at asking questions and listening.
If you have advice, please leave me a comment. I had some fun doing this, and I’m glad I didn’t need to bother too many people to get this working.
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