Question

I have a about 6 or 7 text boxes which needs to be validated to make sure they are not empty from server side code. So how I usually do this is, check each textbox 1 by 1 to ensure that they are not empty. Are there any other efficient methods to do this? I have searched on SO and have found out that adding all the textboxes to a list and using a for each is a much better method. Are there any other ways that this can be achieved? Thanx a lot in advance 🙂

Answer 1

Just check them each individually:

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.NameTextBox.Text) ||
    string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.AddressLine1TextBox.Text) ||
    // etc...
   )
{
    // Handle me
}

Or possibly:

void CheckTextBox(TextBox textBox)
{
    if (textBox == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("textBox");
    }
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(textBox.Text))
    {
        // Handle me
    }
}

void Validate()
{
    CheckTextBox(this.FirstNameTextBox);
    CheckTextBox(this.AddressLine1TextBox);
    CheckTextBox(this.AddressLine2TextBox);
}

7 text boxes really isn’t that many – explicitly checking each one keeps it simple and makes sure that others reading your code know what’s going on, whereas messing around with collections is adding another layer of indirection, and makes it just slightly less straightforward to debug.

Keep it simple!