Currently in the ASP.NET application I’m developing, basic validations (ie required fields) are being done in the Presentation Layer, using Validators and a ValidationSummary. This is working great for me specifically since the ValidationSummary will display multiple error messages (assuming multiple Validators are set to invalid).
I also have some validations being done in the business layer – due to their complexity (and data service layer reliance) I’d rather not keep them in the presentation layer. However, I’m not sure the best way to send these back to the presentation layer for display to the user. My initial consideration is to send back a List<string> with failed validation messages and then dynamically create a CustomValidator control (since apparently you can only bind one error message to one Validator control) for each error to show in the ValidationSummary when there are any.
I’m assuming I’m not the first one to come across this issue, so I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions on this.
Thanks!
There are essentially two ways to do this: either by passing back an error code/object from your business layer, or throw out an exception. You can also combine both.
For an example, you can take a look SqlException class. When you send a SQL to SQL Server, it runs a query parser to parse your SQL first. If it sees syntax error, then it will throw out a SqlException and terminate the query. There may be multiple syntax errors in your query. So SqlExeption class has an Errors property that contains a list of errors. You can then enumerate through that list in your presentation layer to format your error message, probably with a CustomValidator.
You can also simply just return the error list without throwing an exception. For example, you can have your function to return a List in case at least one error occurred and return null in case the call was successful. Or you can pass List as an argument into your function. They are all fine, it all depends on which way you feel is more convenient. The advantage of throwing out an exception is it unwinds multiple call frames immediately, so you don’t have to check return value on every level. For example, if function A calls function B , B calls function C, C sees something wrong, then if let C to return an error object (or error code), then B has to have code to check whether C returned an error and pass that error code/value back, A have to check it as well —- you need to check it on every level. On the other hand, if you just let C to throw an exception, then the code goes straight to the exception handler. You don’t have check return values on every level.