---
title: "Inlining Syntax Error Messages into Templates in C#"
---

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## Purpose Summary

This page explains how to inline syntax error messages in templates when using the reporting engine.

```

By default, LINQ Reporting Engine throws an exception when encounters a template syntax error. Such an exception provides information on a reason of the error and specifies a tag or expression part where the error is encountered. In most cases, this information is enough to find a place in a template causing the error and fix it.

However, when dealing with complex templates containing a large number of tags, it becomes harder to find an exact place in a template causing an error. To make things easier, the engine supports the `ReportBuildOptions.InlineErrorMessages` option that enables inlining of a syntax error message into a template document at an exact position where the error occurs during runtime.

**Note** - A template syntax error message is written using a bold font to make it more apparent.

Consider the following template.

```xml
<<var [name]>>
```

By default, such a template causes the engine to throw an exception while building a report. However, when `ReportBuildOptions.InlineErrorMessages` is applied, no exception is thrown and the report looks as follows then.

```xml
<<var [name] Error! An assignment operator is expected. >>
```

**Note** - Only messages describing errors in template syntax can be inlined; messages describing errors encountered during expressions’ evaluation cannot.

When `ReportBuildOptions.InlineErrorMessages` is applied, a `Boolean` value returned by a `ReportingEngine.BuildReport` overload indicates whether building of a report was finished successfully or was interrupted because of a template syntax error. This enables you to process reports which building succeeded or failed differently as shown in the following code snippet.

```csharp
ReportingEngine engine = new ReportingEngine();
engine.Options | = ReportBuildOptions.InlineErrorMessages;
if (engine.BuildReport(...))
{
	// Do something with a successfully built report.
}
else
{
	// Do something with a report containing a template syntax error.
}
```

**Note** - When `ReportBuildOptions.InlineErrorMessages` is not applied, `ReportingEngine.BuildReport` overloads return `true` if there were no template syntax errors encountered or throw an exception otherwise.