I am a coldfusion programmer moving to dotnet, and while I am not having a problem populating asp.net controls with data from my sql server. I can't figure out how to identify a data field value from the database in a conditional statement.
EG

If [table].[field] is X
then [do something]

I am sure it is simple, but I have been working on this for 2 days and can only get information on how to populate controls.

Thanks,

Hi there,

Ca you show us some code? There's a big difference in how you should compare depending on where you use this code, and what data objects you are using (e.g. in the markup, in code behind with a dataset or a datareader and so on)

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004

In my example, I will keep the code in the codebehind. When the page loads, I would like to pull one record from the jobDetails table where the jobDetailsID is 1.
Lets say there is one bit field in the jobDetails table called requiresAddress

I would like to set the visibility of a form field based on the value of that bit field.
Here is what I have based on code from a wrox book.

if (!Page.IsPostBack )
        {
            SqlConnection MyConnection;
            SqlCommand MyCommand;
            DataTable MyDataTable;
            SqlDataReader MyReader;
            SqlParameter lobParam;

            MyConnection = new SqlConnection();
            MyConnection.ConnectionString =
        ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["rdConnectionString"].ConnectionString;

            MyCommand = new SqlCommand();
            MyCommand.CommandText =
               " SELECT jobDetailsID, requiresAddress FROM jobDetails WHERE jobDetailsID = @jobDtailsID ";
            MyCommand.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
            MyCommand.Connection = MyConnection;

            lobParam = new SqlParameter();
            lobParam.ParameterName = "@jobDetailsID";
            lobParam.SqlDbType = SqlDbType.Int;
            lobParam.Size = 4;
            lobParam.Direction = ParameterDirection.Input;
            lobParam.Value = "1";

            MyCommand.Parameters.Add(lobParam);

            MyCommand.Connection.Open();
            MyReader = MyCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConne ction);



            MyDataTable.Load(MyReader);
 // This is where I don't know what to do

            topinfo.Visible = MyDataTable.requiresAddress;

            MyDataTable.Dispose();
            MyCommand.Dispose();
            MyConnection.Dispose();

        }

Hi frosty,

If all you need to do is check a single field, then you don't need the DataTable. Instead, you can read from the reader directly:

if (MyReader .Read())
{
  someControl.Visible = MyReader .GetBoolean(3);
}

where 3 is the (zero-based) index of the colum you want to read. If you want to improve the readability of the code, you can use GetOrdinal, that returns the index based on a name:

  someControl.Visible = MyReader.GetBoolean(MyReader.GetOrdinal("requiresA ddress"))

And if SomeColumn can be null in the database, you can check it before you try to get a boolean:

if (MyReader.IsDBNull(MyReader.GetOrdinal("requiresAd dress")))
{
  // value is null
}

Hope this helps,

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004