Convert rows from a data reader into typed results

Do you really need a list, or would IEnumerable be good enough?

I know you want it to be generic, but a much more common pattern is to have a static Factory method on the target object type that accepts a datarow (or IDataRecord). That would look something like this:

public class Employee
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public static Employee Create(IDataRecord record)
    {
        return new Employee
        {
           Id = record["id"],
           Name = record["name"]
        };
    }
}

.

public IEnumerable<Employee> GetEmployees()
{
    using (var reader = YourLibraryFunction())
    {
       while (reader.Read())
       {
           yield return Employee.Create(reader);
       }
    }
}

Then if you really need a list rather than an IEnumerable you can call .ToList() on the results. I suppose you could also use generics + a delegate to make the code for this pattern more re-usable as well.

Update: I saw this again today and felt like writing the generic code:

public IEnumerable<T> GetData<T>(IDataReader reader, Func<IDataRecord, T> BuildObject)
{
    try
    {
        while (reader.Read())
        {
            yield return BuildObject(reader);
        }
    }
    finally
    {
         reader.Dispose();
    }
}

//call it like this:
var result = GetData(YourLibraryFunction(), Employee.Create);

You could build an extension method like:

public static List<T> ReadList<T>(this IDataReader reader, 
                                  Func<IDataRecord, T> generator) {
     var list = new List<T>();
     while (reader.Read())
         list.Add(generator(reader));
     return list;
}

and use it like:

var employeeList = reader.ReadList(x => new Employee {
                                               Name = x.GetString(0),
                                               Age = x.GetInt32(1)
                                        });

Joel's suggestion is a good one. You can choose to return IEnumerable<T>. It's easy to transform the above code:

public static IEnumerable<T> GetEnumerator<T>(this IDataReader reader, 
                                              Func<IDataRecord, T> generator) {
     while (reader.Read())
         yield return generator(reader);
}

If you want to automatically map the columns to properties, the code idea is the same. You can just replace the generator function in the above code with a function that interrogates typeof(T) and sets the properties on the object using reflection by reading the matched column. However, I personally prefer defining a factory method (like the one mentioned in Joel's answer) and passing a delegate of it into this function:

 var list = dataReader.GetEnumerator(Employee.Create).ToList();

Whilst I wouldn't recommend this for production code, but you can do this automatically using reflection and generics:

public static class DataRecordHelper
{
    public static void CreateRecord<T>(IDataRecord record, T myClass)
    {
        PropertyInfo[] propertyInfos = typeof(T).GetProperties();

        for (int i = 0; i < record.FieldCount; i++)
        {
            foreach (PropertyInfo propertyInfo in propertyInfos)
            {
                if (propertyInfo.Name == record.GetName(i))
                {
                    propertyInfo.SetValue(myClass, Convert.ChangeType(record.GetValue(i), record.GetFieldType(i)), null);
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

public class Employee
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    public DateTime? BirthDate { get; set; }

    public static IDataReader GetEmployeesReader()
    {
        SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["NorthwindConnectionString"].ConnectionString);

        conn.Open();
        using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT EmployeeID As Id, LastName, BirthDate FROM Employees"))
        {
            cmd.Connection = conn;
            return cmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection);
        }
    }

    public static IEnumerable GetEmployees()
    {
        IDataReader rdr = GetEmployeesReader();
        while (rdr.Read())
        {
            Employee emp = new Employee();
            DataRecordHelper.CreateRecord<Employee>(rdr, emp);

            yield return emp;
        }
    }
}

You can then use CreateRecord<T>() to instantiate any class from the fields in a data reader.

<asp:GridView ID="GvEmps" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="true"></asp:GridView>

GvEmps.DataSource = Employee.GetEmployees();
GvEmps.DataBind();