Question

What is a good error handling practice for an asp.net site? Examples? Thanks!

Answer 1

As with any .net project I find the best way is to only catch specific error types if they are may to happen on the given page.

For example you could catch Format Exceptions for a users given input (just incase JavaScript validation fails and you have not use tryparse) but always leave the catching of the top level Exception to the global error handler.

     try         {             //Code that could error here         }         catch (FormatException ex)         {             //Code to tell user of their error             //all other errors will be handled              //by the global error handler         } 

You can use the open source elmah (Error Logging Modules and Handlers) for ASP.Net to do this top level/global error catching for you if you want.

Using elmah it can create a log of errors that is viewable though a simple to configure web interface. You can also filter different types of errors and have custom error pages of your own for different error types.