HVUpdate Exception: Value cannot be null - c#

I am getting a very strange exception and am having quite a bit of trouble tracking it down. I'm not sure how much good posting it here will do, but I figured it would be worth a shot.
On software that is working in the world, one of our clients started getting a continuous stream of exceptions in the Event Log. I have the program set up to store events under the company name in Applications and Services, and set the Source to the actual class that is writing the event when called.
The full error that I am getting is:
HVUpdate Exception: Value cannot be null
Parameter name: source
I have checked my code, and the only place I use a variable named "source" is when writing to the Event Log. However, this should only happen when starting the service. After that, all logs are written to a log file. I confirmed that source was defined in each of the two classes that might write to the Event Log.
The service has been running just fine, and is writing to the log file as expected.
Has anyone seen an HVUpdate error before, and know what might cause it? I do not have a class by that name, nor do I access one. My best guess is that it is a class used by the Event Logging, and it is telling me that my Source is null when trying to write a log. However, if this were the case, there would be a maximum of 3 logs written, not one a second. I've done a Google search on HVUpdate, but wasn't able to find anything there, either.
An odd question, I know. I hope someone has seen something similar before and can point me in the correct direction. If you need additional information, let me know. Thank you.

Related

C# how to log file inside a DLL?

I'm developing a DLL and I want to log some data it generates.
I wanted to use "Log4Net", but I found the problem that in a DLL I don't have an "App.config" file where I can write the XML code, so I don't know how to implement this (I'm new in this matters).
I read about "Singleton" but I saw it's better to avoid it since it has it's issues (i.e hide some visibility of the code, problems with unit tests, ...).
So my question is: How and what is the best way to create a log file for the data generated by my DLL?
A DLL - a class library - should never be logging by itself. Even the ones that are there for output - like the one containing Console or even logger code - should never decide to write their own logfile. Logging work - all output work - that is not controllable or even fully controlled by the programmer using your DLL, is just going to be vexing behavior. And you should never write something with Vexing behavior.
Logging is the job of the person using your code, not of your code. If you are writing a Library or really anything else that usually has no output (like a Windows Service), it is customary to have a wrapper project for debugging and testing.
If it is important enough it warants an Exception. If it is not important enough for a Exception - it is propably not important enough at all. It is a daunting challenge to write good Exception handling, nevermind good Exception throwing code. But there are two articles on the mater that I link very often. And I really think would help you get you on the right paths:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericlippert/2008/09/10/vexing-exceptions/
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9538/Exception-Handling-Best-Practices-in-NET
They really helped me get a handle on it. And thus far they helped countless others. And their ideas are not even tied to .NET only.
The config file will be connected in running module.
It will be in exe file if it's a console application,
or in web.config in case of web application.
To log the application flow in the DLL,
Just create a Class that create and access the log text file.
In that class, declare the object LoggingClass loggingObject; and then use this instance to access the log file.
In creating object for it, you can use,
public static LoggingClass createOrGetObject()
{
return (loggingObject == null)? new LoggingClass() : loggingObject;
}
Now, just you can call this method to get the same instance that access the log file to write the log.
In this example, Log4Net is not used but works fine for logging.
You don't say who you expect to use your dll.
If it will be used by lots of other people and if the logging is useful to them, then may not want to be forced to use log4net or this may cause problems if they want to use a different version of log4net than you are using.
I have seen several dlls which use Common.Logging to avoid this issue which allows the consumers to use whichever logging package they want.
Having said that, see Configure log4net logging in dll for another possible solution.

External Config Files (configSource) Dropped From Memory (MVC, C#, ASP.net)

We are having an intermittent issue where config files, or more specifically subset of values within that data are getting lost into the ether. Truth be told I am at a loss as to how to approach it because I am unsure if it's a code, config, machine or IIS issue. To give you an idea of what's happening....
What we are doing
We have a config file that contains "price" drop down values :
<searchForm>
<priceLowerBoundValues>
<priceLowerBoundValue>2500</priceLowerBoundValue>
<priceLowerBoundValue>5000</priceLowerBoundValue>
....
</priceLowerBoundValues>
....
</searchForm>
These are contained within a file named searchForm.config. In web.config they are referenced as an external file like so.
<searchForm configSource="Config\searchForm.config" />
We have a custom configuration handler that inherits from IConfigurationSectionHandler. The gist of being this code here that gets the values.
var priceLowerBoundValueXPath = "/searchForm/priceLowerBoundValues/priceLowerBoundValue/text()";
searchFormLookups.PriceLowerBoundValues = section.SelectNodes(priceLowerBoundValueXPath).Cast<XmlNode>().Select(x => int.Parse(x.Value));
Then the ONLY place we reference it, is when building a select list for the viewmodel. It looks a little like this :
SearchFormConfiguration.PriceLowerBoundValues.ToSelectList((parameters.PriceLowerBound != null) ? parameters.PriceLowerBound.Value : 0)
There is no modifications done to the list ever, and using resharper "Find Usages" only brings up this single call. No other point in the program touches these values.
The Issue
What will happen intermittently is that the drop down boxes on our webpage suddenly have only one value (e.g. 2500 in the price box). Do note it is not completely empty, but usually most values are gone. We have had similar issues of external configs dropping (almost completely) and it causes null reference errors across the place. e.g. it's still looking for a config that's supposed to be there, but it has been wiped from the face of the earth.
Stopping the website, stopping the app pool, and then bringing everything up again fixes the issue. Which made me initially think it could be something with memory usage, and external configurations being the first thing it drops, but I'm really unsure at this point.
Another thing to note. We have an app pool restart in the early hours of the morning everyday.
Any help with this is much appreciated, even if it's just a nudge into the right direction. As I say, I can't find any info on where to start, be it IIS settings or code. :)
I have an idea of what might me wrong.
Line
x.PriceLowerBoundValues = section.SelectNodes(...).Cast<XmlNode>().Select(...);
Basically a lazy enumerator over the XmlNodeList.
From MSDN docs:
The XmlNodeList object returned by this method will be valid while the
underlying document remains unchanged. If the underlying document
changes, unexpected results may be returned (no exception will be
thrown).
Is there any chance that the underlying document changes?
Will there still be problem if you put values to, say, array? Like ..Select().ToArray();

Why do most exceptions omit instance-specific information?

I've noticed that most exception messages don't include instance-specific details like the value that caused the exception. They generally only tell you the "category" of the error.
For example, when attempting to serialize an object with a 3rd. party library, I got a MissingMethodException with message:
"No parameterless constructor defined for this object."
In many cases this is enough, but often (typically during development) a message like
"No parameterless constructor defined for this object of type 'Foo'."
can save a lot of time by directing you straight to the cause of the error.
InvalidArgumentException is another example: it usually tells you the name of the argument but not its value.
This seems to be the case for most framework-raised exceptions, but also for 3rd party libraries.
Is this done on purpose?
Is there a security implication in exposing an internal state like the "faulty" value of a variable?
Two reasons I can think of:
Firstly, maybe the parameter that threw the exception was a value that was a processed form of the one that was passed to the public interface. The value may not make sense without the expense of catching to rethrow a different exception that is going to be the same in most regards anyway.
Secondly, and more importantly, is that there can indeed be a security risk, that can be very hard to second-guess (if I'm writing a general-purpose container, I don't know what contexts it will be used in). We don't want "Credit-Card: 5555444455554444" appearing in an error message if we can help it.
Ultimately, just what debug information is most useful will vary according to the error anyway. If the type, method and (when possible) file and line number isn't enough, it's time to write some debug code that traps just what you do want to know, rather than complaining that it isn't already trapped when next time you might want yet different information (field state of instances can be just as likely to be useful as parameters).
InvalidArgumentException and (per #Ian Nelson) "Key not found in dictionary" both share something in common - there's no guarantee that the framework would be able to find a suitable value to show you - if the key/argument is of any user defined type, and ToString() hasn't been overridden, then you would just get the type name - it's not going to add a lot of value.
Exceptions are mostly meant for a program to consume. Most programs wouldn't know what to do with information about the instance.
The Message property is aimed at human consumption. Other than in a debugging scenario, humans won't know what to make of Foo.
Many exception mechanisms try to serve a hodgepodge of orthogonal purposes by passing a single exception-derived object:
Letting the caller know that various specific things have happened, or that various specific problems exist.
Determining when the exceptional condition is "resolved" so that normal program flow can continue.
Providing an indication of what to tell the user of the program
Providing information which could be logged to allow the owners of a system to identify problems, when a secure log is available
Providing information which could be logged to allow the owners of a system to identify problems, but which would not pose a security risk even if secure logging is not available.
Unfortunately, I'm unaware of any exception mechanism in widespread use which can actually accomplish all five of the above, well.

Where can I find a list of all possible messages that an XmlException can contain?

I'm writing an XML code editor and I want to display syntax errors in the user interface. Because my code editor is strongly constrained to a particular problem domain and audience, I want to rewrite certain XMLException messages to be more meaningful for users. For instance, an exception message like this:
'"' is an unexpected token. The
expected token is '='. Line 30,
position 35
.. is very technical and not very informative to my audience. Instead, I'd like to rewrite it and other messages to something else. For completeness' sake that means I need to build up a dictionary of existing messages mapped to the new message I would like to display instead. To accomplish that I'm going to need a list of all possible messages XMLException can contain.
Is there such a list somewhere? Or can I find out the possible messages through inspection of objects in C#?
Edit: specifically, I am using XmlDocument.LoadXml to parse a string into an XmlDocument, and that method throws an XmlException when there are syntax errors. So specifically, my question is where I can find a list of messages applied to XmlException by XmlDocument.LoadXml. The discussion about there potentially being a limitless variation of actual strings in the Message property of XmlException is moot.
Edit 2: More specifically, I'm not looking for advice as to whether I should be attempting this; I'm just looking for any clues to a way to obtain the various messages. Ben's answer is a step in the right direction. Does anyone know of another way?
Technically there is no such thing, any class that throws an XmlException can set the message to any string. Really it depends on which classes you are using, and how they handle exceptions. It is perfectly possible you may be using a class that includes context specific information in the message, e.g. info about some xml node or attribute that is malformed. In that case the number of unqiue message strings could be infinite depending on the XML that was being processed. It is equally possible that a particular class does not work in this way and has a finite number of messages that occur under specific circumstances. Perhaps a better aproach would be to use try/catch blocks in specific parts of your code, where you understand the processing that is taking place and provide more generic error messages based on what is happening. E.g. in your example you could simply look at the line and character number and produce an error along the lines of "Error processing xml file LineX CharacterY" or even something as general as "error processing file".
Edit:
Further to your edit i think you will have trouble doing what you require. Essentially you are trying to change a text string to another text string based on certain keywords that may be in the string. This is likely to be messy and inconsistent. If you really want to do it i would advise using something like Redgate .net Reflector to reflect out the loadXML method and dig through the code to see how it handles different kinds of syntax errors in the XML and what kind of messages it generates based on what kind of errors it finds. This is likely to be time consuming and dificult. If you want to hide the technical errors but still provide useful info to the user then i would still recomend ignoring the error message and simply pointing the user to the location of the problem in the file.
Just my opinion, but ... spelunking the error messages and altering them before displaying them to the user seems like a really misguided idea.
First, The messages are different for each international language. Even if you could collect them for English, and you're willing to pay the cost, they'll be different for other languages.
Second, even if you are dealing with a single language, there's no way to be sure that an external package hasn't injected a novel XmlException into the scope of LoadXml.
Last, the list of messages is not stable. It may change from release to release.
A better idea is to just emit an appropriate message from your own app, and optionally display -- maybe upon demand -- the original error message contained in the XmlException.

How would you like an API to expose error handling?

This title begs for more explanation.
Basically, I'm rolling an API that wraps a web service in a nice heirarchical model. This model exposes things in the form:
var obj = MyRemoteResource.GetForId(1234, SourceEnum.ThatSource);
ApiConsumerMethod(obj.SomeProperty); //SomeProperty is lazily loaded, and often exposes such lazily loaded properties itself
... etc ...
Where many different RemoteResources* (each with many properties exist). There's really aggresive cacheing going on, and request throttling to prevent inadvertantly DOS'ing the servers (and getting the IP of the caller banned).
I've got all this code working, but I'm not doing much in the way of error handling at the moment. Basically, if the consumer of an API provides an invalid ID, the web server is down, a connection times out, or any other of a plethora of request layer errors occur an exception just percolates up when a property is accessed.
I consider this far less than ideal.
So my question is, how should I wrap these errors up so that it is convenient for a user of this API to manage them?
Some routes I have considered:
Just wrap all exceptions in some API defined ones, and document them as thrown.
Expose a static ErrorHandler class that allows a user to register notification callbacks for specific errors; falling back to the above behavior when no registration has been made for specific errors.**
Null properties on error, and set a LastErrorCode.
Each of these approachs have strengths and weaknesses. I'd appreciate opinons on them, as well as alternatives I haven't thought of.
If it impacts the discussion at all, the platform class throwing these exceptions is WebClient. Furthermore, usage of WebClient is sufficiently abstract that it could easily be replaced with some other download scheme if needed.
*Which is to say, many different classes
**This would be... wierd. But it maps to the global nature of the failure. This is my least favorite idea thus far.
I wouldn't implement fancy error technologies (like events and stuff like this). It's not easy to judge where and how to use exceptions, but this is no reason to implements other stuff.
When you request an object by an id which doesn't exist, what do you have to tell the caller about this? If you just return null, the client knows that it doesn't exist, there is nothing more to say.
Exceptions force the caller to care about it. So they should only be used where the caller is expected to do something special. Exception can provide the information why something didn't work. But if it is an "error" the user could also ignore, an exception is not the best choice.
There are two common alternatives to exceptions.
Use return values which provide information about the result of an action. For instance, logon could return a LogonResult instead of throwing an exception.
Write two methods, one throwing an exception, and one (Try...) returning a boolean. The caller decides if it wants to ignore the "error" or not.
Personally I believe this is entirely dependent on the context of what your API end-user is trying to do. If this is the case, you should let them decide how to handle erors.
Recently when working with CSV files (very error prone) I used an API that allowed you to define the exception behaviour. You could either ignore the error, replace by some default value/action, or pass them off to an event handler.
I really liked this approach of letting the end user decide how to handle internal exceptions, because unless your API is very specific its difficult to preempt all scenarios.
I prefer to have an exception thrown at me when something bad happens. Exceptions are (for me, anyways) the common way to tell that something went wrong, and i find it more intuitive to catch, than to check a return value for null and check another property to see what went wrong..

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