I got tired of tedious null-checking while pulling values from MySqlDataReader, so:

public static DateTime? GetNullableDateTime(this MySqlDataReader dr, string fieldName)
{
    DateTime? nullDate = null;
    return dr.IsDBNull(dr.GetOrdinal(fieldName)) ? nullDate : dr.GetDateTime(fieldName);
}

public static string GetNullableString(this MySqlDataReader dr, string fieldName)
{
    return dr.IsDBNull(dr.GetOrdinal(fieldName)) ? String.Empty : dr.GetString(fieldName);
}

public static char? GetNullableChar(this MySqlDataReader dr, string fieldName)
{
    char? nullChar = null;
    return dr.IsDBNull(dr.GetOrdinal(fieldName)) ? nullChar : dr.GetChar(fieldName);
}

Of course this could be used with any SqlDataReader.

I got tired of tedious null-checking while pulling values from MySqlDataReader, so:

public static DateTime? GetNullableDateTime(this MySqlDataReader dr, string fieldName)
{
    DateTime? nullDate = null;
    return dr.IsDBNull(dr.GetOrdinal(fieldName)) ? nullDate : dr.GetDateTime(fieldName);
}

public static string GetNullableString(this MySqlDataReader dr, string fieldName)
{
    return dr.IsDBNull(dr.GetOrdinal(fieldName)) ? String.Empty : dr.GetString(fieldName);
}

public static char? GetNullableChar(this MySqlDataReader dr, string fieldName)
{
    char? nullChar = null;
    return dr.IsDBNull(dr.GetOrdinal(fieldName)) ? nullChar : dr.GetChar(fieldName);
}

Of course this could be used with any SqlDataReader.

Both hangy and Joe had some good comments on how to do this, and I have since had an opportunity to implement something similar in a different context, so here is another version:

public static int? GetNullableInt32(this IDataRecord dr, int ordinal)
{
    int? nullInt = null;
    return dr.IsDBNull(ordinal) ? nullInt : dr.GetInt32(ordinal);
}

public static int? GetNullableInt32(this IDataRecord dr, string fieldname)
{
    int ordinal = dr.GetOrdinal(fieldname);
    return dr.GetNullableInt32(ordinal);
}

public static bool? GetNullableBoolean(this IDataRecord dr, int ordinal)
{
    bool? nullBool = null;
    return dr.IsDBNull(ordinal) ? nullBool : dr.GetBoolean(ordinal);
}

public static bool? GetNullableBoolean(this IDataRecord dr, string fieldname)
{
    int ordinal = dr.GetOrdinal(fieldname);
    return dr.GetNullableBoolean(ordinal);
}