Checking for null before ToString()

Update 8 years later (wow!) to cover c# 6's null-conditional operator:

var value = maybeNull?.ToString() ?? String.Empty;

Other approaches:

object defaultValue = "default";
attribs.something = (entry.Properties["something"].Value ?? defaultValue).ToString()

I've also used this, which isn't terribly clever but convenient:

public static string ToSafeString(this object obj)
{
    return (obj ?? string.Empty).ToString();
}

If you are targeting the .NET Framework 3.5, the most elegant solution would be an extension method in my opinion.

public static class ObjectExtensions
{
    public static string NullSafeToString(this object obj)
    {
        return obj != null ? obj.ToString() : String.Empty;
    }
}

Then to use:

attribs.something = entry.Properties["something"].Value.NullSafeToString();

Convert.ToString(entry.Properties["something"].Value);

Adding an empty string to an object is a common idiom that lets you do null-safe ToString conversion, like this:

attribs.something = ""+entry.Properties["something"].Value;

When entry.Properties["something"].Value is null, this quietly returns an empty string.

Edit: Starting with C# 6 you can use ?. operator to avoid null checking in an even simpler way:

attribs.something = entry.Properties["something"].Value?.ToString();
//                                                     ^^

Can you not do:

attribs.something = entry.Properties["something"].Value as string;

Checking for null before ToString()

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