What's the most DRY-appropriate way to execute an SQL command?
- by Sean U
I'm looking to figure out the best way to execute a database query using the least amount of boilerplate code. The method suggested in the SqlCommand documentation:
private static void ReadOrderData(string connectionString)
{
string queryString = "SELECT OrderID, CustomerID FROM dbo.Orders;";
using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
{
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand(queryString, connection);
connection.Open();
SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();
try
{
while (reader.Read())
{
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0}, {1}", reader[0], reader[1]));
}
}
finally
{
reader.Close();
}
}
}
mostly consists of code that would have to be repeated in every method that interacts with the database.
I'm already in the habit of factoring out the establishment of a connection, which would yield code more like the following. (I'm also modifying it so that it returns data, in order to make the example a bit less trivial.)
private SQLConnection CreateConnection()
{
var connection = new SqlConnection(_connectionString);
connection.Open();
return connection;
}
private List<int> ReadOrderData()
{
using(var connection = CreateConnection())
using(var command = connection.CreateCommand())
{
command.CommandText = "SELECT OrderID FROM dbo.Orders;";
using(var reader = command.ExecuteReader())
{
var results = new List<int>();
while(reader.Read()) results.Add(reader.GetInt32(0));
return results;
}
}
}
That's an improvement, but there's still enough boilerplate to nag at me. Can this be reduced further? In particular, I'd like to do something about the first two lines of the procedure. I don't feel like the method should be in charge of creating the SqlCommand. It's a tiny piece of repetition as it is in the example, but it seems to grow if transactions are being managed manually or timeouts are being altered or anything like that.
