MFC Dialog Data Validation reverting data on failure - c++

Question

Has anyone found a way to revert a value on an editbox if it fails validation? If the value is invalid, it harasses the user with message boxes until they fix it.
void MyDlg::DoDataExchange(CDataExchange* pDX)
{
CDialog::DoDataExchange(pDX);
DDX_Text(pDX, IDC_EDIT_FOO, foo);
DDV_MinMaxFloat(pDX, foo, 0.001f, 300.0f);
}

Answer 1

I was able to do this by writing custom DDX_ handlers. The application I worked on used a custom control (MCReal derived from CEdit) that would only accept decimal values between an acceptable range defined in the control. When the user entered a non-decimal value, or, a value outside of the range, the code would pop up a custom message and revert the value entered into the dialog field.
This was accomplished by creating a custom control and a custom validation handler. Here’s what the DDX_ routine looked like:
void AFXAPI_EXPORT DDX_ProcessEditReal(CDataExchange* pDX, int nIDC, MCReal& mcr)
{
// prepare edit control
HWND hWndCtrl = pDX->PrepareEditCtrl(nIDC);
// does control exist yet?
if (!IsWindow(mcr.m_hWnd))
{
// subclass the control
if (!mcr.SubclassWindow(hWndCtrl))
{
ASSERT(false);
// possibly trying to subclass twice?
AfxThrowNotSupportedException();
}
return;
}
if (!ValidateMCRealCtrl (mcr, pDX->m_pDlgWnd, (pDX->m_bSaveAndValidate == TRUE)))
{
pDX->Fail ();
}
}
I used the standard DDX_ routines as a starting point to write a custom version. The real work is done in ValidateMCRealCtrl():
bool ValidateMCRealCtrl (MCReal &mcRealCtrl, CWnd *pParentWnd, bool bSaveAndValidate)
{
CString ctext;
double val = 0.0, r = 0.0;
double unit_factor = 0.0;
bool bDmsrg = false;
bool rc = false;
bool ret;
...
if (bSaveAndValidate) // Move from dialog to data
{
if (pParentWnd != nullptr && mcRealCtrl.CancelButtonClicked (pParentWnd))
{
return true;
}
if (!mcRealCtrl.IsWindowEnabled () || !mcRealCtrl.IsWindowVisible ())
{
return true;; // don't update if not enabled
}
mcRealCtrl.GetWindowText (ctext);
...
// base field validation.
ret = mcRealCtrl.Validate ();
if (!ret)
{
make_mcreal_str (r, ctext.GetBuffer (mcRealCtrl.maxlen), mcRealCtrl.maxlen, prec, mcRealCtrl.add_plus,
mcRealCtrl.m_strip_trailing == TRUE);
ctext.ReleaseBuffer ();
InvalidRealField (mcRealCtrl); // Bad value
return false; // Reset Focus
}
...
ctext.ReleaseBuffer ();
mcRealCtrl.SetWindowText (ctext);
}
else // Move from data to dialog
{
if (mcRealCtrl.angle) // If angle field...
{
val = mcRealCtrl.value * R2D; // Convert to degrees
}
else
{
val = mcRealCtrl.value; // Use data value
}
make_mcreal_str (val, ctext.GetBuffer (mcRealCtrl.maxlen), mcRealCtrl.maxlen, prec, mcRealCtrl.add_plus,
mcRealCtrl.m_strip_trailing == TRUE);
ctext.ReleaseBuffer ();
mcRealCtrl.SetWindowText (ctext);
mcRealCtrl.SetLimitText (mcRealCtrl.maxlen);
}
...
return true;
}
(Note: I've replaced code that does not pertain to your question with "...")
The work to revert the field value occurs in InvalidRealField (). That code displays a pop up message and uses the previous value of the field (saved within the actual MCReal control class), before it was changed, to revert the value.
This framework was not written specifically to revert incorrect dialog field values. It provides much more than that since the control class provides some extra capabilities. However, having the control defined in a custom class allowed me to provide custom validation.