Checking to see if a column exists in a data reade

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• Check for column name in a SqlDataReader object 22 answers

Is there a way to see if a field exists in an IDataReader-based object w/o just checking for an IndexOutOfRangeException?

In essence, I have a method that takes an IDataReader-based object and creates a strongly-typed list of the records. In 1 instance, one data reader has a field that others do not. I don't really want to rewrite all of the queries that feed this method to include some form of this field if I don't have to. The only way I have been able to figure out how to do it so far is to throw the 1 unique field into a try/catch block as shown below.

try
{
    tmp.OptionalField = reader["optionalfield"].ToString();
}
catch (IndexOutOfRangeException ex)
{
    //do nothing
}

Is there a cleaner way short of adding the "optional field" to the other queries or copying the loading method so 1 version uses the optional field and the other doesn't?

I'm in the 2.0 framework also.

Answer 1

Load it into a DataTable and then you can check for column:

DataTable dataTable = new DataTable();
dataTable.Load(reader);
foreach (var item in dataTable.Rows) 
{
    bool columnExists = item.Table.Columns.Contains("ColumnName");
}