Mar 19 2013

Single Page Applications 2: Validation Error Handling

Category: MVC | Asp.netFrancesco @ 22:30

Data Moving Plugin Controls

Data Moving Plugin Styling

Data Moving Plugin Forms: Detail Views, Data Filtering UI, and Undo/Redo Stack

Single Page Applications 1: Manipulating the Client Side ViewModel

Single Page Applications 2: Validation Error Handling

Single Page Applications 3: TreeIterator

This is the second half of the tutorial Single Page Applications 1: Manipulating the Client Side ViewModel that describes the enhancements added to the standard asp.net Mvc validation error engine by the Data Moving Plug-in. We advice to assist the video associated to this introductory tutorial before reading it:

In the Data Moving Plug-in validation rules, and error handling are coded with the usual tools of Asp.net Mvc, such as Data Annotations (or Fluent validation), by adding errors to the ModelState, etc. Also client side validation is based on the jquery validation plug-in. However, all this tools have been enhanced in several ways. First of all, server errors are returned also as a result of JSon updates, and dispatched to the right places in the UI (thanks to the updatesManagers that handle the updates). Moreover, also elements that are detached from the Dom, and rendered again by instantiating  client templates “remember” their error state thanks to parallel data structures that takes care of this “job”.

Probably, the more interesting enhancement is “error bubbling”. What is “error bubbling”? Suppose you need to report an error to the property AllProgrammers[1].EMail, that is to the Email of the second programmer of the programmers list. Well, since the grid has no visible Email column, the error cant be shown! In order to overcome this problem the error is bubbled up to the whole entity level:  AllProgrammers[1]. Now since we added an error column to the programmers grid the user can see the second programmer has an error:

  1. .AddErrorColumn(m => m, "*", width: 20)

Since we put m => m the error column is triggered by whole entity level errors. This way also errors in fields that are not shown in a grid row can be signalled to the user. Error bubbling is useful also in TreeViews/TreeGrids because an error happening in a child entity is signalled also in its father entity, so the user may open the right branch of the tree to find the children entity in error.

Error bubbling is automatically applied to both the errors returned by the server and to client side validation errors.

What if the user want to know exactly which among the fields that are not shown in the grid is in error in order to correct the error? Simple! He just shows the entity in error in a detail view, and thanks to the errors synchronization behavior with detail views provided by the data moving plug-in he will see the error in the detail view!

Another interesting feature is Error Filtering. All Data Moving plug-in controls that have been enhanced with a retrievalManager, have error filtering capabilities. This means, they respond to a “show just entity in error” filtering command that can be issued with a button in a toolbar. This way the user can review all errors by browsing the list of all entities in error.

Everything works properly because the Data Moving engine “remembers” the error state of a field also if the entity the field in error belongs to is removed from the Dom, for instance, because of paging.

In order to minimize the round-trips to the server the Data Moving Plug-in offers the possibility to add entity level validation rules, and whole Core Workspace validation rules directly on the client side.

Below the addition of an entity level validation rule to the programmers updatesManager:

 

  1. TeamBuilding.programmersUpdater.options({ itemErrors: function (x) {
  2.         if (x.CanBeTeamLeader() && (!x.Experience() || x.Experience() < 7))
  3.             return ["A 7 years experience is required to be a Team Leader"];
  4.         else return null;
  5.     }
  6.     });

Validation errors are specified through a function that receives an entity as argument and returns an array of errors. Error dispatching in the adequate place of the UI is done automatically by the Data Moving plug-in engine.

Below the definition of a Core Workspace level validation rule in the whole Workspace updatesManager:

  1. TeamBuilding.ClientModel, "ProposedTeam", TeamBuilding.DestinationModel, "ProposedTeam",
  2. { updatersIndices: [TeamBuilding.programmersUpdater, TeamBuilding.artistsUpdater],
  3.     {
  4.     ......
  5.     ......
  6.     Errors: function (model) {
  7.         if (model.LeaderProgrammer() && model.LeaderArtist()) return null;
  8.         else return ["The team is incomplete"];
  9.     }
  10. });

We can also specify an error callback that is invoked with a data structure containing information on the errors as argument whenever there are errors in the Workspace :

  1. onObjectErrors: function (errorObjects) {
  2.                  alert("Click the error button to show errors that are not visible on the screen");
  3.              }

That’ all for now!

Stay tuned and give a look also to all other Data Moving Plug-in introductory tutorials and videos

                      Francesco

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