Distinguish exceptions thrown by the Tridion core service

Question

I am trying to distinguish different Exceptions being thrown in the core service. The core service throws only one Type of Exception: CoreServiceFault. Now I want to start reading the ErrorCodes to distinquish them.

Now the thing I am searching for is a list of various Errorcodes/Messages etc so I can distinquish the errors.

Anyone got a list or a suggestion?

Answer 1

The CoreServiceFault error codes are not documented in the API documentation and I think the list of error codes is not in the Tridion.ContentManager.CoreService.Client.dll either.

Maybe this could be explained because it is up to the Core Service to throw the fault, the client cannot have a complete list of all fault codes.

I think you should check e.Detail.ErrorCode and e.Detail.Messages and raise them as an excption, you cannot write too much logic based on the ErrorCode anyway since it is not a documented list.

Answer 2

You can access the error code by catching the exception as FaultException<CoreServiceFault> and then accessing the Detail property. For example:

try
{
    client.Delete(itemId);
}
catch (FaultException<CoreServiceFault> ex)
{
    switch (ex.Detail.ErrorCode)
    {
        case "PermissionDenied":
            // Do something specific to the user not having access
            break;
        case "ItemDoesNotExist":
            // Maybe you should have checked client.IsExistingObject before trying to delete :)
            break;
    }
}

Answer 3

I don't know, how you want distinguish them exactly (assuming, that in some place you can get TcmErrorcodes of some specific types...for example on saving schema you can get InvalidXSD = 0x0328,when XSD of the schema is null). To find list - look to TcmErrorCode enum in the Tridion.ContentManager.Common assembly.

Answer 4

In addition, one more observation that I have experienced (Not with Core Service but with the TOM.NET API) and wish to share - We had received same error codes for two absolutely different errors while I was trying to do a POC for some business requirement and wanted to raise some user friendly errors by identifying the Error Codes and to my surprise I got two different errors but same error code, so be cautious if you are trying to do something like that.

Answer 5

Btw, you can still go with Exception names...I have similar code example, as Peter:

 try
        {
            return _client.Read(
                itemId,
                new ReadOptions()
                );
        }
        catch (FaultException<CoreServiceFault> e)
        {
            if (e.Detail.ExceptionName == typeof(ItemDoesNotExistException).Name)
            {
                return null;
            }
            throw;
        }

So, you can still go with exception names, but not errorcodes.