tsJensen | C# Basics: Beware of Catch (Exception e)

In this third installment of C# Basics, let's take a look at exception handling. It is one the easiest things to do poorly in an application. In C# you can capture an error and do something with it as easily as this:

try
{
  //do something that may raise an exception
}
catch (Exception e)
{
  //do something with e--log it, modify a return value, etc.
  //if you want the caller of your code to have a crack at the same exception
  throw; //raise the exception again with throw; (almost NEVER throw e;)
}

But do try your best to NEVER catch the base Exception class. Be more specific, especially where you have to do something specific with a particular type of exception and allows others to rise up the call stack. Here’s just one example of being a bit more specific:

try
{
  //call a service that reads data from SQL Server
}
catch (SqlException se)
{
  if (se.Message.Contains("Timeout"))
  {
    //send a timeout log message to the DBA service
  }
  throw; //raise it up the stack to be handled by the caller
}

Of course, you can and ought to handle different exceptions differently where required. Here’s a brief example:

try
{
  //call a service that reads data from SQL Server
  //call another service that writes to a file
}
catch (SqlException se)
{
  if (se.Message.Contains("Timeout"))
  {
    //send a timeout log message to the DBA service
  }
  throw; //raise it up the stack to be handled by the caller
}
catch (IOException iox)
{
  //special handling or logging of IO exceptions
  Console.WriteLine(iox.Message);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
  //log a general exception and rethrow
  throw;
}

And don’t forget, you can create your own specialized exception classes. In fact, with Visual Studio you can use the code snippet for Exception. Just put your cursor in a C# file, outside of a class declaration, and start typing Exception and when you see the Intellisense prompt just hit TAB TAB. And you will have the following:

[Serializable]
public class MyException : Exception
{
	public MyException() { }
	public MyException(string message) : base(message) { }
	public MyException(string message, Exception inner) : base(message, inner) { }
	protected MyException(
	 System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo info,
	 System.Runtime.Serialization.StreamingContext context)
		: base(info, context) { }
}

Flesh out your own custom exception and raise and catch it just like a pro.

public void ShowExample(int count)
{
  if (count < 0) throw new MyException("Count cannot be less than zero.");
  // . . .
}

public void CallExample()
{
  try
  {
    ShowExample(-4);
  }
  catch (MyException me)
  {
    Console.WriteLine(me.Message);
  }
}

Of course, in the above example, you would more likely want to just throw a new ArgumentException. There is a very long list of commonly used exception classes in the .NET base class libraries. Spend some time on MSDN and get familiar with them. Here’s a brief but incomplete list of common exception classes you may want to catch or throw and then catch.

System.ArgumentException
System.ArgumentNullException
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException
System.ArithmeticException
System.DivideByZeroException
System.FormatException
System.IndexOutOfRangeException
System.InvalidOperationException
System.IO.IOException
System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException
System.IO.EndOfStreamException
System.IO.FileLoadException
System.IO.FileNotFoundException
System.IO.PathTooLongException
System.NotImplementedException
System.NotSupportedException
System.NullReferenceException
System.OutOfMemoryException
System.Security.SecurityException
System.Security.VerificationException
System.StackOverflowException
System.Threading.SynchronizationLockException
System.Threading.ThreadAbortException
System.Threading.ThreadStateException
System.TypeInitializationException
System.UnauthorizedAccessException

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