When a parameter is NULL, it means there is not an actual value for that parameter. This can happen for several reasons, including lack of knowledge or understanding of that parameter.
Parameter nulls are not acceptable in WSDL documents. You cannot use the NULL symbol to mean something does not exist or has no value.
Parameter nulls have a certain meaning to denote absence, as in they are missing a value. For example, the parameter t1_name represents the absence of a name and t2_name represents the name that is present in the document.
Invalid parameters have a different meaning than non-NULL parameters has has has has has invalid values. When an invalid parameter exists, it can mean two things: either there is an actual value for it but it is wrong or there is no value for it at all.
This article will discuss invalid parameters and how to identify them.
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Parameter validation
When your backend API doesn’t validate the parameters it receives, your customers can get stuck. For example, they send in a payment but the product isn’t delivered, or they enter an email but not a password when signing up for an account.
Invalid parameters can happen for several reasons. In this article, we will focus on what invalid parameters mean and how to tell if a parameter is invalid.
Invalid Parameters & Validation Affordable
How Does Invalid Parameter Validation Work? Affordable paragraph: When there are features on your product, you may be asking yourself how they integrate with each other. The answer is via API calls or integrations.
These integrations take place through applications and/or browsers via plugins or extensions. These apps and/or extensions connect to your API to send requests.
Provide valid values
If your app uses a parameter to determine if a user has signed in, then you should ensure that your app gives the parameter a value that corresponds with the sign in setup.
In the sign in process, you use the sign-in email and password parameters to determine if the user is logged in. If the user is, then their account is associated with their email and password and your app can recognize them from previous sign in attempts.
If the user does not have an account, then your app can use the email and/or password parameters to determine if they should be created. If so, your app can ask their provider to send an email or text message containing their credentials.
Provide valid types
When a parameter is of an invalid type, PHP will throw an exception. This can be useful when working with legacy code that uses incorrect parameters.
Invalid parameters come in many forms, some of which are: numeric values that are not numeric constants, string values that are not valid strings, and even integer values that are not numbers.
Most of the time, you do not need to worry about this as a beginner developer, but if you have been developing for web apps for awhile and have changed apps or development languages, then this could be useful to look back at.
When looking at old code to replace with the new one, make sure to account for this so you do not introduce bugs or loss of data due to incorrect parameters.
Check the length of parameters
When a parameter has an incorrect length, this can be problematic. It could mean that you have to use a lot of spaces to enter the length of the parameter.
Paragraphs and titles are important in computer programming, so make sure to add the right length of space for your code. It would be good to include an extra space or two on each end of the parameter to give them some separation.
Parameter length issues can come up in several ways. Some ways are when someone inputs long values into the parameter field. When you combine too many long parameters, even if they are short, short-length parameters may result.
Validating your parameters gives them a higher chance of working and setting them wrong does not hurt either! Luckily, invalidating them is easy.
Try using auto-complete
We introduce you to auto-complete here, try using it for your parameters.
Auto-complete works by applying a list of terms to various words in your text and then seeing if those terms are also words in your parameter list.
When you press the answer key, autocomplete opens up a list of suggestions that match your text. You can then choose one of them and continue typing!
The same technique works for entering data into forms.
See if the application reports the error elsewhere
If the application reports the error elsewhere, try reporting it to the application’s host or website. If those parties are aware of the error, they can fix it.
In most cases, if an app reports an invalid parameter error to its website, it is a temporary issue. Once the app is installed, data entry applications check their email notifications and emails from the website they entered data into so they can notify you that your entry was successful.
If this happens often, I recommend changing your notifications to text only instead ofwavring as people update their devices with new software versions. It may seem like a small thing to change, but having people know how much time was spent entering data can help them determine whether or not they need to start over with another device or software version.
Check the stack trace
When you use a programming language that doesn’t have a return or breakpoint, you must add check points to your code to make sure the stack trace is there.
Many languages do not have a return or breakpoint and therefore need to add check points to your code. This is very important!
There are two ways to look for check points in your code. The first is to use the aforementioned stack trace, but you will only get what programmatic steps were taken. The second is to use the debugger, which gives you more flexibility.
In the case of an invalid parameter error, look at the stack trace to see what programmatic steps were taken and whose parameters were invalid.
Are there any typos?
When there are typos, the page is not working as intended. The alert box becomes a blank canvas, with all the wrong information superimposed on it.
If there are grammatical errors or missing words, these can be added or removed easily. Addressing these can make a big difference on how people see your website and what they think about your product or service.
Making sure that people are notified of their invalid parameters is a way to fix this. Being able to address the issues quickly is important so that people know their time is being spent correctly.