C# – Should I always call Page.IsValid

asp.netcnetvalidation

I know to never trust user input, since undesirable input could be compromise the application's integrity in some way, be it accidental or intentional; however, is there a case for calling Page.IsValid even when no validation controls are on the page (again, I know its bad practice to be trusting user input by omitting validation)? Does Page.IsValid perform any other kinds of validation? I looked at MSDN, and the docs seem to suggest that Page.IsValid is only effective if there are validation controls on the page, or the Page.Validate method has been called. A friend of mine suggested that I always check Page.IsValid in the button click handlers every time even if there are no validation controls or explicit Page.Validate calls.

Best Answer

I would be the first to tell you that "All input is evil until proven otherwise." However, in this case, I think your friend is mistaken because by his/her logic we could probably come up with a hundred other properties that should be checked or set, even though the defaults are okay.

Checking Page.IsValid only makes sense if you have a "CausesValidation" scenario - a button that submitted the form has its CausesValidation property set to True. This would automatically call Page.Validate and all Validation controls belonging to the same ValidationGroup would be checked for validity.

Edit:

Just checked it using Reflector and the function will always return True if the Page does not have any Validators(ValidatorCollection is null).

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Also in .NET objects do not change type as they are constructed, but start out as the most derived type, with the method table being for the most derived type. This means that virtual method calls always run on the most derived type.

When you combine these two facts you are left with the problem that if you make a virtual method call in a constructor, and it is not the most derived type in its inheritance hierarchy, that it will be called on a class whose constructor has not been run, and therefore may not be in a suitable state to have that method called.

This problem is, of course, mitigated if you mark your class as sealed to ensure that it is the most derived type in the inheritance hierarchy - in which case it is perfectly safe to call the virtual method.

C# – Should ‘using’ directives be inside or outside the namespace

There is actually a (subtle) difference between the two. Imagine you have the following code in File1.cs:

// File1.cs
using System;
namespace Outer.Inner
{
    class Foo
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Now imagine that someone adds another file (File2.cs) to the project that looks like this:

// File2.cs
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The compiler searches Outer before looking at those using directives outside the namespace, so it finds Outer.Math instead of System.Math. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), Outer.Math has no PI member, so File1 is now broken.

This changes if you put the using inside your namespace declaration, as follows:

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namespace Outer.Inner
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Now the compiler searches System before searching Outer, finds System.Math, and all is well.

Some would argue that Math might be a bad name for a user-defined class, since there's already one in System; the point here is just that there is a difference, and it affects the maintainability of your code.

It's also interesting to note what happens if Foo is in namespace Outer, rather than Outer.Inner. In that case, adding Outer.Math in File2 breaks File1 regardless of where the using goes. This implies that the compiler searches the innermost enclosing namespace before it looks at any using directive.

Best Answer

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