Entity rule violations: more descriptive error messages

Question

We have several BC4J entity objects, view objects and a JSP application. The entity objects contain rules like mandatory attributes, validation rules at the attribute level, etc. If the user enters invalid data in an HTML form and submits, the errors are generally cryptic and difficult for the user to understand. For example, if the user misses a required field, the exception indicates that "JBO-12345 ... ReqTypeId is required" (for example). It would be ideal if the message could be changed to include the label hint in the message. For example, "Requirement Type is required", where "Requirement Type" is the label hint that is displayed on browse, edit and query pages.
Validation rules (e.g. range rule) applied at the attribute level have a similar issue. Custom rules in validateEntity() do not have this issue because they are custom and we can throw whatever exception we want, with a detailed, user-friendly message.
If this is not possible in JDeveloper 9.0.2 (without extensive custom coding), will it be possible in a future release?
Thanks,
Bill

Answer 1

We have several BC4J entity objects, view objects and a JSP application. The entity objects contain rules like mandatory attributes, validation rules at the attribute level, etc. If the user enters invalid data in an HTML form and submits, the errors are generally cryptic and difficult for the user to understand. For example, if the user misses a required field, the exception indicates that "JBO-12345 ... ReqTypeId is required" (for example). It would be ideal if the message could be changed to include the label hint in the message. For example, "Requirement Type is required", where "Requirement Type" is the label hint that is displayed on browse, edit and query pages.
Validation rules (e.g. range rule) applied at the attribute level have a similar issue. Custom rules in validateEntity() do not have this issue because they are custom and we can throw whatever exception we want, with a detailed, user-friendly message.
If this is not possible in JDeveloper 9.0.2 (without extensive custom coding), will it be possible in a future release?In 9.0.2 you can route all JboExceptions at the JSP level via a handle-all-jbo-exceptions method where you may perform such 'message conversions'. IN general that's the practice most apps have to implement to wrap framework exceptions into user-level exceptions. IN JCLient that's the paradigm followed so that applications can funnel all exceptions via a single handler and perform any exception message massaging.
However you suggestion about involving control-hints into messages by default is a good one and I'd log an Enhancement #2623360 to track this idea.
Thanks,
Bill