handling dbnull data in vb.net

The only way that i know of is to test for it, you can do a combined if though to make it easy.

If NOT IsDbNull(myItem("sID")) AndAlso myItem("sID") = sId Then
   'Do success
ELSE
   'Failure
End If

I wrote in VB as that is what it looks like you need, even though you mixed languages.

Edit

Cleaned up to use IsDbNull to make it more readable

I got tired of dealing with this problem so I wrote a NotNull() function to help me out.

Public Shared Function NotNull(Of T)(ByVal Value As T, ByVal DefaultValue As T) As T
        If Value Is Nothing OrElse IsDBNull(Value) Then
                Return DefaultValue
        Else
                Return Value
        End If
End Function

Usage:

If NotNull(myItem("sID"), "") = sID Then
  ' Do something
End If

My NotNull() function has gone through a couple of overhauls over the years. Prior to Generics, I simply specified everything as an Object. But I much prefer the Generic version.

You can also use the Convert.ToString() and Convert.ToInteger() methods to convert items with DB null effectivly.

A variation on Steve Wortham's code, to be used nominally with nullable types:

Private Shared Function GetNullable(Of T)(dataobj As Object) As T
    If Convert.IsDBNull(dataobj) Then
        Return Nothing
    Else
        Return CType(dataobj, T)
    End If
End Function

e.g.

mynullable = GetNullable(Of Integer?)(myobj)

You can then query mynullable (e.g., mynullable.HasValue)

Microsoft came up with DBNull in .NET 1.0 to represent database NULL. However, it's a pain in the behind to use because you can't create a strongly-typed variable to store a genuine value or null. Microsoft sort of solved that problem in .NET 2.0 with nullable types. However, you are still stuck with large chunks of API that use DBNull, and they can't be changed.

Just a suggestion, but what I normally do is this:

1. All variables containing data read from or written to a database should be able to handle null values. For value types, this means making them Nullable(Of T). For reference types (String and Byte()), this means allowing the value to be Nothing.
2. Write a set of functions to convert back and forth between "object that may contain DBNull" and "nullable .NET variable". Wrap all calls to DBNull-style APIs in these functions, then pretend that DBNull doesn't exist.