Question

How can I show a div with information whenever an exception occurs when executing my action?

Here is what I have so far:

<div id="dvErrorMsg">
    <a href="#" class="close">[x]</a>
    <p>
        <label id="errorMessage">
        </label>
    </p>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
        $(function () {

            $("#click_here").click(function (event) {
                event.preventDefault();
                $("#dvErrorMsg").slideToggle();
            });

            $("#dvErrorMsg a").click(function (event) {
                event.preventDefault();
                $("#dvErrorMsg").slideUp();
            });
        });
</script>

And I have this action in my controller:

public ActionResult Validatecall()
{
    //if any exeption happen show div with the custom error
}

How can I catch any exception and send the message back in the AJAX response?

Answer 1

You can try returning a JavaScriptResult in this case that will tell your div to expand:

public ActionResult Validatecall()
{
    ActionResult result;
    try
    {
       // do whatever
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
       result = JavaScript("$('#dvErrorMsg').show();$('#errorMessage').val(/* Put exception message here*/")");
    }
    return result;
}

Generally, I would not recommend using this way to interact with the view as you now introduce a dependency into the controller on the view itself as explained here. I offered it as a way to do it since I do not know exactly how you are calling this action.

Assuming you are calling this action using an ajax call like post I would return a JsonResult indicating if an exception occurred and pass the error message back that way:

$.post("urltoaction", function (result) {    
   if (result.success)
   {
      // do whatever
   }
   else
   {
     //exception occurred show errors
     $('#dvErrorMsg').show();
     $('#errorMessage').val(result.exceptionMsg);
   }  
});

Here is the controller code now:

 public ActionResult Validatecall()
 {
        ActionResult result;
        try
        {
          // do whatever
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
           result = new JsonResult()
                    {
                        Data = new { success = false, exceptionMsg = e.Message },
                        JsonRequestBehavior = JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet
                    };
        }
        return result;
}