Tip/Trick: Handling Errors with the UpdatePanel control using ASP.NET AJAX
Luis Abreu is an ASP.NET MVP who has a great blog on the http://msmvps.com blog site. Earlier today he posted a great tutorial post that describes how to use some of the new features in the ASP.NET AJAX Beta1 release to add more robust error handling into your application. I highly recommend reading and bookmarking it for future use.
Error handling in an AJAX world can often be tricky -- especially when AJAX call-backs are taking place and a mixture of client and server code is running within an application. In its most recent release, the <asp:updatepanel> control that comes with ASP.NET AJAX now has much more robust error handling and reporting features for you to use. Specifically:
1) You can now handle the "OnAsyncPostBackError" event on the <asp:scriptmanager> control to catch and/or modify an error message that occurs during the processing of an AJAX postback callback on the server.
2) You can now set the "AllowCustomErrors" property on the <asp:scriptmanager> control to enable the standard ASP.NET custom error support to be enabled to redirect a user automatically to an error page when an error occurs (even if it is happening during an AJAX postback).
3) You can now optionally handle client-side JavaScript events on the page to intercept any error message sent back from the server, and perform custom client-side actions as a result (for example: to output the error message to a nicely formatted <div> section instead of performing a pop-up message).
Read all about how to take advantage of the above new features from Luis' great tutorial here.
Hope this helps,
Scott