Validation Checkking VS 2008 C#
I am looking for tips on how to perform better validation checking than what I did in this code snippet. What was happening, rarely, but it did happen was the value of DocumentStatus was null which is an invalid state but bad data happens. What is the cleanest and most efficient way to rewrite this and account for nulls? My entire form just crashed and locked up because of this. Is the only answer to add DocumentStatus != null to all the if statements? Does C# have an equivalent to the SQL coalesce function?
if (PmTransactionScroll.DocumentStatus == 3)
{
if (ViewPayablesDistributionZoomFormHIST == null || ViewPayablesDistributionZoomFormHIST.Created == false)
{
ViewPayablesDistributionZoomFormHIST = new frmViewJobLinkerHIST();
ViewPayablesDistributionZoomFormHIST.Show();
ViewPayablesDistributionZoomFormHIST.Activate();
ViewPayablesDistributionZoomFormHIST.Focus();
}
}
wdosanjos
What's the DocumentStatus data type?
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ASKER
I have no control over the DocumentStatus object. It is defined as an integer.
If it is an integer then it cannot hold a null value. So it must either be a Nullable<int>, in which case null would be a valid value, or it is complaining about something else.
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ASKER
The problem is with the scrolling object. This object is on a form. What I have discovered is that occasionally the form is empty so probably what I should be checking is for an empty form not a null value of the integer.
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I am relaetively new to VS C# and .Net Programming and one thing I have noticed is that if you have any kind of conditional statement but neglect to account for a condition, when the program runs into that condition only heaven knows what it will do. It appears to just fall off the cliff. I tried putting breakpoints in the code but since this condition was not accounting for none of them would get hit. I guess that is a clue in itself. Thanks for your help.