Managing optional dates in a business object

[Eric Caron]

Hi all,

I have a property in one of my classes that represents an optional date.
I'm trying to figure out if I can represent Null or Nothing as the value for
a Date data type. Branching in the data access layer to send a Null to the
stored procedure is no problem, but managing a Null date in the business
object is another matter. I'm thinking of using a specific date (like
01-01-0001) to define the date as being empty/Null.

Any thoughts/ideas?

Éric

[Armin Zingler]

"Eric Caron" <ec****@nospam. quebecaffaires. com> schrieb

Hi all,

I have a property in one of my classes that represents an optional
date. I'm trying to figure out if I can represent Null or Nothing as
the value for a Date data type. Branching in the data access layer
to send a Null to the stored procedure is no problem, but managing a
Null date in the business object is another matter. I'm thinking of
using a specific date (like 01-01-0001) to define the date as being
empty/Null.

Any thoughts/ideas?

3 thoughts:
- specific date
- property type: object
- wrapped date class

The latter:
class WrappedDate
public Value as Date
public sub new(byval value as date)
me.value = value
end sub
end class

Define the property as WrappedDate. Now the value can be Nothing which would
represent DBNull.
--
Armin

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[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

* "Eric Caron" <ec****@nospam. quebecaffaires. com> scripsit:

I have a property in one of my classes that represents an optional date.
I'm trying to figure out if I can represent Null or Nothing as the value for
a Date data type. Branching in the data access layer to send a Null to the
stored procedure is no problem, but managing a Null date in the business
object is another matter. I'm thinking of using a specific date (like
01-01-0001) to define the date as being empty/Null.

You may want to use 'System.Data.Sq lTypes.SqlDateT ime'.

--
Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]
<URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>

[Eric Caron]

Thank you Armin, that's a very clever way to manage it. I was hoping to get
away with this problem more easily, but I think I can't. Besides, your
method is more elegant than using a specific date.

Thanks again!

"Armin Zingler" <az*******@free net.de> wrote in message
news:40******** *************** @news.freenet.d e...

"Eric Caron" <ec****@nospam. quebecaffaires. com> schrieb

Hi all,

I have a property in one of my classes that represents an optional
date. I'm trying to figure out if I can represent Null or Nothing as
the value for a Date data type. Branching in the data access layer
to send a Null to the stored procedure is no problem, but managing a
Null date in the business object is another matter. I'm thinking of
using a specific date (like 01-01-0001) to define the date as being
empty/Null.

Any thoughts/ideas?
3 thoughts:
- specific date
- property type: object
- wrapped date class

The latter:
class WrappedDate
public Value as Date
public sub new(byval value as date)
me.value = value
end sub
end class

Define the property as WrappedDate. Now the value can be Nothing which

would represent DBNull.
--
Armin

How to quote and why:
http://www.plig.net/nnq/nquote.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html