Was asked for this code a few days ago after a quick demo I did, so I thought I'd throw it out here. Its a quick code snippet that displays the contents of a DataSet for debugging purposes. But first, here is a quick code snippet that grabs a DataSet full of 2 DataTables.
private void GetData()
{ string cnStr = @"server=Mine;database=northwind;integrated security=true;";
SqlConnection cn = new SqlConnection(cnStr);
DataSet ds = new DataSet("MyDataSet");
string customerSql = "SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName, City, Country"
+ " FROM Customers ORDER BY CompanyName";
SqlCommand customerCmd = new SqlCommand(customerSql);
customerCmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
customerCmd.Connection = cn;
SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(customerCmd);
da.Fill(ds, "Customers");
string orderSql = "SELECT OrderID, CustomerID, OrderDate "
+ " FROM Orders ORDER BY OrderDate DESC";
SqlCommand orderCmd = new SqlCommand(orderSql);
orderCmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
orderCmd.Connection = cn;
da.SelectCommand = orderCmd;
da.Fill(ds, "Orders");
DisplayDataSet(ds, "My Data");
}
And here is the code snippet that iterates through the DataSet to show the DataTables:
private void DisplayDataSet(DataSet ds,
string title)
{ Debug.WriteLine(title);
//--- Loop through the DataTables
foreach (DataTable table in ds.Tables)
{ Debug.WriteLine("*** DataTable: " + table.TableName + "***"); //--- Loop through each DataTable's DataRows
foreach (DataRow row in table.Rows)
{ //--- Display the original values, if there are any.
if (row.HasVersion(System.Data.DataRowVersion.Original))
{ Debug.Write("Original Row Values ===> "); foreach(DataColumn column in table.Columns)
Debug.Write(column.ColumnName + " = " +
row[column, DataRowVersion.Original] + ", ");
Debug.WriteLine(""); }
//--- Display the current values, if there are any.
if (row.HasVersion(System.Data.DataRowVersion.Current))
{ Debug.Write("Current Row Values ====> "); foreach(DataColumn column in table.Columns)
Debug.Write(column.ColumnName + " = " +
row[column, DataRowVersion.Current] + ", ");
Debug.WriteLine(""); }
Debug.WriteLine(""); }
}
}
The code is pretty straightforward for DisplayDataSet. I loop through each table in the DataSet, then through the rows in each table, and finally through the columns in each row. Before checking each column, however, I first check to make sure the row has an Original version and/or a Current version. This is nice for displaying the original and current versions of a column's value when you allow the user to edit multiple rows and send all of the changes to the server in a batch. If you don't check if the row has an original version first and the row happens to have been a new row, then it will throw an exception.
I often take this code and modify it for the debugging purpose of the moment. I've used a couple that throw them into hierarchical DataGrids and make everything nice and pretty. But sometimes I just want a quick and dirty method with a quick and drity code base like this. There are tools out there that you can download to do this, but if all you need is a quick method to display the data and its row versions, this will do nicely too.
Oh ... and the code above assumes the following using statements:
using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Diagnostics;