Immediate vs. Accumulative Error Handling in ASP.NET Web API: Which Approach is Best?

Best Practices for Error Handling in ASP.NET Web API

The question arises about the best approach for handling errors in ASP.NET Web API. Should errors be returned immediately upon encountering them, or should they be accumulated and returned collectively?

Immediate Error Handling

In this method, errors are thrown as HttpResponseException objects, halting further processing immediately. For instance:

public void Post(Customer customer)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(customer.Name))
    {
        throw new HttpResponseException("Customer Name cannot be empty", HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); 
    }
    if (customer.Accounts.Count == 0)
    {
         throw new HttpResponseException("Customer does not have any account", HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); 
    }
}

Pros of Immediate Error Handling:

• Simple implementation
• Errors are communicated to the client promptly
• Prevents unnecessary processing

Cons of Immediate Error Handling:

• Can result in multiple exceptions being thrown for the same request
• Requires custom error handling for each exception

Accumulative Error Handling

In this approach, errors are collected into a list and returned collectively as HttpResponseException objects. For example:

public void Post(Customer customer)
{
    List<string> errors = new List<string>();
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(customer.Name))
    {
        errors.Add("Customer Name cannot be empty"); 
    }
    if (customer.Accounts.Count == 0)
    {
         errors.Add("Customer does not have any account"); 
    }
    var responseMessage = new HttpResponseMessage<List<string>>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest);
    throw new HttpResponseException(responseMessage);
}

Pros of Accumulative Error Handling:

• Provides a comprehensive list of all errors
• Allows for custom error handling in a central location

Cons of Accumulative Error Handling:

• Can be more complex to implement
• May delay the client from receiving error information
• Requires additional bandwidth for large error lists

Recommendation

The choice between immediate and accumulative error handling depends on the application's requirements. For simple scenarios, immediate error handling is adequate. For more complex scenarios, accumulative error handling may be more suitable.

Updates

Since this question was answered, several blog posts have addressed this topic, including:

• https://weblogs.asp.net/fredriknormen/asp-net-web-api-exception-handling
• https://learn.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/youssefm/error-handling-in-asp-net-webapi

Recent Practices

Current error handling practices include:

• Immediate response for general errors: Using HttpResponseException to report typical errors like not found or invalid parameters.
• Accumulative response for server errors: Allowing exceptions to bubble up to a global exception filter, which logs the error and provides a friendly message.
• Custom IHttpActionResult classes: Using built-in or custom classes in the System.Web.Http.Results namespace (for example, NotFoundWithMessageResult) to return specific error messages.

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