Can't retrieve a specific item from a dataset

Question

I've looked through the other questions related to this, but I'm having a different issue. I can't get a specific item to return, it only returns my column name. How do I get the item to return?

public static string GetOneFieldRecord(string field, string companyNum)
{
    DataSet ds = new DataSet();
    SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand();

    string strSQL = "SELECT @FieldName FROM Companies WHERE CompanyNum = @CompanyNum";
    SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection();
    conn.ConnectionString = @connstring;
    comm.Connection = conn;
    comm.CommandText = strSQL;
    comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("@FieldName", field);
    comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("@CompanyNum", companyNum);

    SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter();
    da.SelectCommand = comm;

    conn.Open();

    da.Fill(ds, "CompanyInfo");

    conn.Close();

    return ds.Tables[0].Rows[0].ItemArray[0].ToString();
}

I've also tried

return ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][0].ToString();

I'm just getting whatever is in the field variable. If I pass in ("CompanyName", 33), it returns "CompanyName".

Answer 1

Your query (in sql profiler) is

SELECT 'CompanyName' FROM Сompanies WHERE СompanyNum = 33

So it returns exactly "CompanyName" string. You cannot pass column name as sqlparameter. You should do something like

public static string GetOneFieldRecord(string field, string companyNum)
{
    DataSet ds = new DataSet();
    SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand();

    string strSQL = string.Format("SELECT {0} FROM Companies WHERE CompanyNum = @CompanyNum", field);
    SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection();
    conn.ConnectionString = @connstring;
    comm.Connection = conn;
    comm.CommandText = strSQL;
    comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("@FieldName", field);
    comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("@CompanyNum", companyNum);

    SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter();
    da.SelectCommand = comm;

    conn.Open();

    da.Fill(ds, "CompanyInfo");

   conn.Close();

   return ds.Tables[0].Rows[0].ItemArray[0].ToString();
}

But this code can be used for SQL injection.

To avoid Sql injection, you could check that fieldName in field variable is one of the table columns.

Or You could get SELECT * FROM Сompanies WHERE СompanyNum = @CompanyNum and get value of named column from datatable:

public static string GetOneFieldRecord(string field, string companyNum)
{
    DataSet ds = new DataSet();
    SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand();

    string strSQL = "SELECT * FROM Companies WHERE CompanyNum = @CompanyNum";
    SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection();
    conn.ConnectionString = @connstring;
    comm.Connection = conn;
    comm.CommandText = strSQL;
    comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("@FieldName", field);
    comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("@CompanyNum", companyNum);

    SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter();
    da.SelectCommand = comm;

    conn.Open();

    da.Fill(ds, "CompanyInfo");

   conn.Close();

   return ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][field].ToString();
}