How To Create a Generic Error Handler for your Application (191474)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Visual Basic Learning Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Learning Edition for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Standard Edition, 32-bit, for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition, 16-bit, for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition, 32-bit, for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition, 16-bit, for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition, 32-bit, for Windows 4.0

This article was previously published under Q191474

SUMMARY

The Visual Basic ON ERROR statement is designed to encapsulate error handling for each procedure or module in an application. This behavior is by design, and is intended to conform with object oriented programming (OOP) conventions. When you create an application, you may wish to have a generic error handler that traps all errors for the application, and handle exceptions to this routine as they occur in various modules.

The ON ERROR statement does not allow the use of an application wide ON ERROR routine. However, it is possible to create a generic routine that is called from within each procedure or method in the application.

MORE INFORMATION

If the error routine is placed in a global module, it can be called manually from each procedure or method in your application. The following code example demonstrates how to set up a global error handling routine, and illustrates how this can be combined with specific error handling in a procedure or method.

This example creates a project that contains two forms and one code module. Each form contains command buttons that cause errors to occur. Some errors are handled within the click method for the command button. Other errors are passed to the generic error handler.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

  1. Create a new standard EXE project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.
  2. Add the following code to the Load method of Form1. This code causes two errors to occur when the form is loaded. The first error will be handled by the form load method. The second error will be passed to the generic error handler:
          Private Sub Form_Load()
          On Error GoTo FormLoadErr
          Err.Raise 76
          Err.Raise 70
          Exit Sub
    
          FormLoadErr:
          Select Case Err.Number  'Evaluate Error Number
             Case 76
                MsgBox "Form_Load Error Handler. Form Does Not Exist"
             Case Else
                AppWideErr (Err.Number) 'Pass Error to generic module
             End Select
          End Sub
    
    						
  3. Add a CommandButton to the form. This code causes two errors to occur. The first error will be handled by the click method. The second error will be passed to the generic routine. Change the Caption property to "Cause Error 53 and 70." Add the following code to the Click method of the CommandButton:
          Private Sub Command1_Click()
          On Error GoTo Cmd1Err
             Err.Raise 53 'Handled locally
             Err.Raise 70 'Handled by generic module
          Exit Sub
    
          Cmd1Err:
          Select Case Err.Number
             Case 53
                MsgBox "Command 1 Error Handler"
             Case Else
                AppWideErr (Err.Number)
             End Select
             Resume Next  'Process the next (70) error
          End Sub
    
    						
  4. Add a second CommandButton to the form. If an error occurred in this method, no error handler would be called. Change the Caption property to "Show Form 2." Add the following code to the Click event:
          Private Sub Command2_Click()
             'No error handling is coded in this method
             'AppWideErr would not be called
       Form2.Show 'Use VB's default error handling only
          End Sub
    
    						
  5. Add a second form to the project. Add a CommandButton to the form. This CommandButton passes all errors to the generic error handler and does not perform any special processing for specific errors. Change the Caption property of the button to "Cause Error 17." Add code to the Click method as follows:
          Private Sub Command1_Click()
          On Error GoTo ThisSubErr
             Err.Raise 17
             Exit Sub
          ThisSubErr:
             AppWideErr (Err.Number)
          End Sub
    
    						
  6. Add a module to the project. Add the following code to the module:
        Public Sub AppWideErr(lnErrNumber)
        Select Case lnErrNumber  'Evaluate error passed to routine
           Case 70
              'The following two lines of code should be typed on one line.
              'Added title to MsgBox to make it clearer where error message
              'came from.
              MsgBox "Generic Routine.  Access Denied.  See Net Administrator."
                  , , "AppWideErr"
              Exit Sub
           Case Else
              'The following two lines of code should be typed on one line.
              'Added title to MsgBox to make it clearer where error message
              'came from.
              MsgBox "Generic Routine. Unhandled Error: " + Err.Description +
                  " # " & lnErrNumber , , "AppWideErr"
              Exit Sub
        End Select
        End Sub
    						
  7. Save and run the project. Note that some errors will be handled by the error routine specific to a method. The logic for each method invokes the generic AppWideErr procedure for any errors not explicitly handled by the method. The error number is passed as a numeric argument to AppWideErr.

REFERENCES

Visual Basic 5.0 Books Online - Error Handling

Visual Basic 6.0 MSDN - Error Handling

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:6/29/2004
Keywords:kbhowto KB191474