Validation issues

Data validation ensures that inputs provided to a system are acceptable from both a technical and business perspective. For example, a user registration system may include validations to ensure that each user has a non-empty first name and last name and that each user’s email address is unique and formatted properly.

Validation issues vs errors

I like to describe issues discovered during validation as “validation issues” rather than “errors” because they are different from programming language “errors” in several ways.

Fixable by end users

End users can fix validation issues by editing the input they provide to the system. This could be done either in a UI form (in the case of a web or mobile user) or changing their API request (in the case of an API user). In contrast, system errors such as “failed to connect to database” are not fixable by users.

Expected to occur

Validation issues are expected to occur periodically during the normal usage of the app, whereas system errors are generally not. User input is unpredictable by nature.

Human-readable

The messages associated with validation issues are expected to be displayed to end users and should be human-readable.

Multiple at once

There may be multiple validation issues during a single mutation. For example, the phone number may be missing and the email may be incorrectly formatted. To the extent possible, all the validation issues should be reported back to the user at once. This means we should not “throw” or “abort” upon the first validation issue.

GraphQL data

In GraphQL, validation issues are included in the “data” part of the response rather than the “errors” part of the response.

Validation issues are not instances of the JavaScript “Error” class.

Where to validate

Validations may be checked at the database level with uniqueness constraints or foreign key constraints. Validations may also be checked in backend application code at run time. And in some cases the frontend may generate validation issues on the client to prove faster user feedback. (Frontend validation can be added in addition to backend validation but is not a replacement).