How to read varbinary of SQL as string in C#?

Question

I have an web application which reads varbinary from SQL as a byte array in code. Basically it does a ExecuteScalar of the column and returns it as a byte array.

I am now doing a mini version of the application as a Windows application. For this, I am trying to skip the DB connection. I am directly inputting the varbinary value from SQL to a RichTextBox and trying to read it as a byte array. However, I do not get the same byte array. What am I doing wrong and how should I proceed ?

Answer 1

I got it using this piece of code

    string hex = richTextBox1.Text
    int NumberChars = hex.Length;
    byte[] bytes = new byte[NumberChars / 2];
    for (int i = 0; i < NumberChars; i += 2)
    bytes[i / 2] = Convert.ToByte(hex.Substring(i, 2).ToString(), 16);
    return bytes;