ArcObjects Library Reference (GeoDatabase)

IField.Type Property

The type of the field.

[Visual Basic .NET]
Public ReadOnly Property Type As esriFieldType

[C#]
public esriFieldType Type {get;}

[C++]
HRESULT get_Type(
  esriFieldType* Type
);

[C++]

Parameters
Type [out, retval]

  Type is a parameter of type esriFieldType*

Product Availability

Available with ArcGIS Engine, ArcGIS Desktop, and ArcGIS Server.

Remarks

For more information on the relation between esriFieldType values and the underlying SDE and DBMS data types, see the following articles in the ArcGIS Help:

"A comparison of ArcGIS, ArcSDE, and DB2 data types"
"A comparison of ArcGIS, ArcSDE, and Informix data types"
"A comparison of ArcGIS, ArcSDE, and PostgreSQL data types"
"A comparison of ArcGIS, ArcSDE, and Oracle data types"
"A comparison of ArcGIS, ArcSDE, and SQL Server data types"

The following table outlines the equivalent field data types in ArcCatalog, ArcObjects and .NET:

ArcCatalog	esriFieldType (IField::Type)	.NET Variable Type
Short Integer	esriFieldTypeSmallInteger	System.Int16
Long Integer	esriFieldTypeInteger	System.Int32
Float	esriFieldTypeSingle	System.Single
Double	esriFieldTypeDouble	System.Double
Text	esriFieldTypeString	System.String
Date	esriFieldTypeDate	System.DateTime
Object ID	esriFieldTypeOID	System.Int32
Geometry	esriFieldTypeGeometry	ESRI.ArcGIS.Geometry.IGeometry
Blob	esriFieldTypeBlob	ESRI.ArcGIS.esriSystem.IMemoryBlobStream
Raster	esriFieldTypeRaster	ESRI.ArcGIS.Geodatabase.IRasterValue
GUID	esriFieldTypeGUID	System.String
GlobalID	esriFieldTypeGlobalID	System.String

The following table outlines the Coverage, INFO Item to Geodatabase field mapping:

Item type	Item width	Geodatabase field type (esriFieldType)
B	4	esriFieldTypeInteger
C	1-320	esriFieldTypeString
D	8	esriFieldTypeDate
F	4	esriFieldTypeSingle
F	8	esriFieldTypeDouble
I	1-4	esriFieldTypeSmallInteger
I	5-9	esriFieldTypeInteger
I	10-16	esriFieldTypeDouble
N	1-9	esriFieldTypeSingle
N	10-16	esriFieldTypeDouble

The following table outlines the Shapefile, dBASE field to Geodatabase field mapping:

Field type	Field width	Geodatabase field type (esriFieldType)
Date	-	esriFieldTypeDate
String	1-255	esriFieldTypeString
Boolean	-	esriFieldTypeString
Number	1-16 (decimals=0)	esriFieldTypeInteger
Number	1-16 (decimals > 0)	esriFieldTypeDouble

Note: Shapefiles only support date fields. Time is not supported. Geodatabases support date\time fields. If a shapefiles date field is queried for the time a default value of "12:00:00 AM" will be returned.

.NET Snippets

Write Blob Field Contents To File | Write Blob File Contents To Table Row Field

.NET Samples

Export any network analysis class to a text file (Code Files: NAClassToTextfileCmd) | Displaying MapTips in the MapControl (Code Files: MapTips) | Bind a geodatabase table to a .NET control (Code Files: FieldPropertyDescriptor) | StreetMap routing (Code Files: RoutingForm) | Timestamper class extension (Code Files: TimestampClassExtension)