Dapper - Return dynamic data

For simple data fetching scenario's, I tend to keep away from Entity Framework and go the micro-ORM approach using libraries like Dapper.

Today I had a small use case where I wanted to return some data using dynamic types in C# and handle it like a list of key-value pairs instead of using strongly typed objects.  The good news is that this is supported out-of-the-box in Dapper.

Dapper gives you multiple overloads that returns a dynamic type. Here is an example using Query():

	public IList<Dynamic> GetTop10Products()
	{
	string sql = "SELECT TOP 10 * FROM Products";
	using var connection = new SqlConnection();
	var products = connection.Query(sql);
	return products;
	}

view raw GetProducts.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Simple but effective!

Remark: If you are not really looking for a dynamic result set but don’t want to create a class or record type, you can also use value tuples to map the returned rows:

	string sql = "SELECT TOP 10 * FROM Products";
	using var connection = new SqlConnection();
	var products = connection.Query<(int ProductID, string ProductName)>(sql);
	return products;

view raw GetProducts.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

More information

Dapper Anonymous Result - Learn How to Map Result to Dynamic Object (dappertutorial.net)