Tuesday, 6 March 2018

Why is there no Delphi error provider?

Recently I've been looking at the best solution for displaying a data entry validation error, for example when a user needs to enter a description that is not a duplicate and they enter a duplicate the user is informed of the error. Many web sites will display an error below the text box highlighting an error, or displaying an error icon next to the text box. In C# (Visual Studio 2017) when developing a forms application there is a 'ErrorProvider' component that is easy to use and displays an icon on the right (exclamation mark by default) with a hint that can contain the error text.

What I am looking for is something similar in Delphi (I am currently using Berlin), and I am surprised there is no 'out of the box' standard component that ships with Delphi that can do this.

I have looked at using a TButtonedEdit control with a right button visible with an exclamation mark as the icon when there is an error, but this does not work well.

I imagine that how software informs a user of a data entry validation error is subjective and some developers will have different ideas, but I am interested in what other developers think and are there any decent 3rd party products that have a single error component.