Best practice to check if DataRow contains a certain column

Question

At the moment, when I iterate over the DataRow instances, I do this.

foreach(DataRow row in table)
  return yield new Thingy { Name = row["hazaa"] };

Sooner of later (i.e. sooner), I'll get the table to be missing the column donkey and the poo will hit the fan. After some extensive googling (about 30 seconds) I discovered the following protection syntax.

foreach(DataRow row in table)
  if(row.Table.Columns.Contains("donkey"))
    return yield new Thingy { Name = row["hazaa"] };
  else
    return null;

Now - is this the simplest syntax?! Really? I was expecting a method that gets me the field if it exists or null otherwise. Or at least a Contains method directly on the row.

Am I missing something? I'll be mapping in many fields that way so the code will look dreadfully unreadable...

Answer 1

You can create an extension method to make it cleaner:

static class DataRowExtensions
{
    public static object GetValue(this DataRow row, string column)
    {
        return row.Table.Columns.Contains(column) ? row[column] : null;
    }
}

Now call it like below:

foreach(DataRow row in table)
    return yield new Thingy { Name = row.GetValue("hazaa") };