DBNulls: the Bane of my Existence

So yes, a DataGridViewCell.value is an object.  But it seems there should be a way to tell it "hey, in this case, when I ask for a value and you have a null, just hand me an empty string".

So I wrote this (for use until I figure out how to default a null cell to string.empty).

        /// <summary>
        /// Converts an object value to a string.
        /// (usually from a DataGridViewCell.Value;
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="value">The value.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public string Val2Str(object value)
        {
            if (value == DBNull.Value)
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }
            return value.ToString();
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Converts a DataGridViewCell value to a string.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="Cell">The cell.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public string Val2Str(DataGridViewCell Cell)
        {
            return Val2Str(Cell.Value);
        }
These overloaded routines can be passed either a DataGridViewCell itself, or just the Value property.  Kinda like this:

string customer = Val2Str(dataGridView1.CurrentRow.Cells["Customer"]);
string customer = Val2Str(dataGridView1.CurrentRow.Cells["Customer"].Value);
...

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Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey.  He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and hosting company in Manteca, California.