Checkbox/Dropdown Validation Question

[lorena]

I have a very long webform to be used for insurance changes. I have a series of radio buttons within each section (Medical, Dental, Life Ins, etc) which users click to indicate which type of change they want to make. With Medical it's no problem, we have one type of Medical and it will be for the employee or employee and family.

With Dental, however, I have the radio buttons, two checkboxes and a dropdown. I need to figure out a way to make sure, if the user selected "Add" for the Dental portion, that they also check at least one checkbox and make a selection from the dropdown.

I am probably overthinking it, but I am having a problem figuring out how to do this. Here is what I have so far (dentalBoolean is modulelevel):

Sub Check_Dental_Choices()
   Dim dFlag As Boolean
   'Check to see if any Dental selections have been made
   If noDentalRadiobutton.Checked = False Then
     If (empDentalCheckBox.Checked = True Or depDentalCheckBox.Checked = True) _
       And dentalDropDownList.SelectedValue <> "Coverage Type" Then
       dentalBoolean = True
       

     Else
       dFlag = False
     End If
   Else
     'If this NoDental is the choice, all other choices are 
     'disregarded and dentalBoolean is set to false
     dentalBoolean = False
   End If
 End Sub

Is there a way to use Try/Catch here? I want the form to cease processing if the user choices aren't correct.

sorry to be so wordy.

thanks in advance.

[MrPaul]

Exceptions and Try...Catch

 

Instead of using the dFlag variable (which you are not really using anyway), you could throw an exception if no checkbox has been selected or no coverage type has been selected. Then the code that calls Check_Dental_Choices uses a Try...Catch block and displays the error to the user in the catch section.

 

Public Sub Check_Dental_Choices()
   dentalBoolean = False

   'Check to see if any Dental selections have been made
   If (Not noDentalRadiobutton.Checked) Then
       If Not (empDentalCheckBox.Checked Or depDentalCheckBox.Checked) Then
           'No checkbox is checked, throw an exception
           Throw New Exception("Please check a box")

       Else If (dentalDropDownList.SelectedValue = "Coverage Type") Then
           'No coverage type selected, throw an exception
           Throw New Exception("Please select a coverage type")

       Else
           'Form ok!
           dentalBoolean = True
       End If
   End If
End Sub

 

And then the calling code:

 

Try
   '... code here

   Check_Dental_Choices()

   '... more code

Catch ex As Exception

   'Display problem to user
   Me.lblError.Text = "A problem occurred with your selection: " & ex.Message

End Try

 

Good luck :)

[lorena]

Thanks so much! I will give that a shot.