Hi... any ideas on how to get a grip on the winforms control used by the
..net to show the details of an exception ?

Hello John,

>Hi... any ideas on how to get a grip on the winforms control used by the
>.net to show the details of an exception ?

What makes you think there's such a control? Don't get me wrong, I don't
have any specific information that says there isn't, only I've never heard
of one.

(I also wasted a few days in the past writing my own totally fantastic
exception visualization control, so I would be interested to hear it if
there was one readily available <g>.)


Oliver Sturm
--
http://www.sturmnet.org/blog

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:59:40 +0200, John Pouliezos <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Hi... any ideas on how to get a grip on the winforms control used by the
>.net to show the details of an exception ?

As Oliver said in his post, I don't think there is one, but as he also said you
can build one. All it has to have is a read only multi line text box (for
scrolling) and an OK button, unless you want to do more with it than display it
and allow the user to copy it. It's nice to be able to ask them to copy the
stack trace and send it to you in an email.

Good luck with your project,

Otis Mukinfus
http://www.arltex.com
http://www.tomchilders.com

Hello Otis,

>As Oliver said in his post, I don't think there is one, but as he also
>said you
>can build one. All it has to have is a read only multi line text box...

Mine is actually quite a lot more complex - it can display an exception
with nested InnerExceptions and it uses Reflection to analyze the
exception class for additional properties, which it also tries to display
as well as it can. To visualize all this information, it has a
"multi-level" dialog with a default page for the average end user and
several technical detail pages that can be activated, for example if a
support engineer instructs the end user to do so. And yes, copying and
pasting is also important - if I remember correctly, I used serialization
to convert the exception, again with all nested information, into an XML
string that can be copied to the clipboard.

I'm sorry, I can't give any of this away... just as a summary of some
ideas. If you (or anyone) want specific help with a certain piece of
functionality I mentioned, feel free to get back to me about it.


Oliver Sturm
--
http://www.sturmnet.org/blog

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:56:56 +0000, "Oliver Sturm" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Hello Otis,
>
>>As Oliver said in his post, I don't think there is one, but as he also
>>said you
>>can build one. All it has to have is a read only multi line text box...
>
>Mine is actually quite a lot more complex - it can display an exception
>with nested InnerExceptions and it uses Reflection to analyze the
>exception class for additional properties, which it also tries to display
>as well as it can. To visualize all this information, it has a
>"multi-level" dialog with a default page for the average end user and
>several technical detail pages that can be activated, for example if a
>support engineer instructs the end user to do so. And yes, copying and
>pasting is also important - if I remember correctly, I used serialization
>to convert the exception, again with all nested information, into an XML
>string that can be copied to the clipboard.
>
>I'm sorry, I can't give any of this away... just as a summary of some
>ideas. If you (or anyone) want specific help with a certain piece of
>functionality I mentioned, feel free to get back to me about it.
>
>
> Oliver Sturm

Gosh, Oliver I'm a lot lazier than you ;o)

I do however log all exceptions to a log file that I can ask the user to send
me. That log file contains the inner exceptions if there are any and using
reflection, a dump of the containing class properties.

I assume that you, like me, do not like to try to guess what the user is trying
to tell me on the phone. I find the logging to be something I can tell them to
send me instead of having them run the application again just to copy the stack
trace from the dialog.


Good luck with your project,

Otis Mukinfus
http://www.arltex.com
http://www.tomchilders.com