Develop Reference

Java, what if I want to return different types from function?

public WHATTOWRITEHERE test()
{
try
{
transaction.begin();
code which may trigger exception
transaction.commit();
return true;
}
catch (javax.script.ScriptException ex)
{
transaction.rollback();
return ex.getMessage();
}
}
the code above intend to do something, if its OK then return true if not (error happened), this error message string should be returned. It do possible with Php but not with Java
EDIT: expection cant go outside, it has to be handled right here.

You can't return multiple types but you can redesign so you don't have to. Some possibilities:
Don't return an error message. Throw or rethrow an exception instead and let the caller handle it.
Create some class that can encapsulate a success and error state and all related info, return an instance of that.
I recommend option 1. You're already handling an exception, you can see its use for it error handling. No reason to stop it in its tracks there, handle any local cleanup then keep it going up to the caller.
Some hastily constructed examples now that I'm back at a keyboard, intended only to illustrate concepts, not to be exhaustive or necessarily used verbatim:
Cleanup then rethrow:
public boolean test () throws javax.script.ScriptException {
try {
transaction.begin();
...
transaction.commit();
return true;
} catch (javax.script.ScriptException ex) {
transaction.rollback();
throw ex;
}
}
Clean up then rethrow a different exception type if needed:
public boolean test () throws MyGreatException {
try {
transaction.begin();
...
transaction.commit();
return true;
} catch (javax.script.ScriptException ex) {
transaction.rollback();
throw new MyGreatException(ex);
}
}
Return an object that provides status information (this is just a quick example of the general idea):
public class TransactionResult {
private final boolean failed;
private final String reason;
/** Construct a result that represents a successful transaction. */
public TransactionResult () {
failed = false;
reason = null;
}
/** Construct a result that represents a failed transaction with a reason. */
public TransactionResult (String failedReason) {
failed = true;
reason = failedReason;
}
public boolean isFailed () {
return failed;
}
public String getReason () {
return reason;
}
}
And then:
public TransactionResult test () {
TransactionResult result;
try {
transaction.begin();
...
transaction.commit();
result = new TransactionResult();
} catch (javax.script.ScriptException ex) {
transaction.rollback();
result = new TransactionResult(ex.getMessage());
}
return result;
}
Etc.

Don't return anything. Just re-throw the original exception after you roll-back.
public void test()
{
try
{
transaction.begin();
code which may trigger exception
transaction.commit();
}
catch (javax.script.ScriptException ex)
{
transaction.rollback();
throw ex; // re-throw the original exception
}
}

If you insist, you can return Object. In that case, true will be autoboxed to Boolean.TRUE. It’s certainly not recommended, and it will give the caller some extra trouble figuring out whether the returned object is a String or a Boolean. To make matters worse, the caller has no guarantee that return types are limited to the mentioned two, but should also take into account that it could be yet another class.
Better options depend on the situation, so I probably cannot tell you what’s best. A couple of ideas spring to mind, but please don’t use uncritically: (1) Return String, and return null instead of true on success. (2) Design your own return class; for instance, it may hold both a boolean and a message string.

UGLY Workaround but if you really want to do this you can always define a Helper class which wraps status and Error Message, but I would prefer #JsonC's approach.
// Helper class
class Pair<First,Second>{
private First first;
private Second second;
Pair(First first,Second second){
this.first = first;
this.second = second;
}
public First getFirst(){ return this.first; }
public First getSecond(){ return this.second; }
}
// Function returning two types
public Pair<boolean,String> returnSomething(){
try {
return new Pair<boolean,String>(true,null);
}catch(Exception e){
return new Pair<boolean,String>(false,e.getMessage());
}
}
// Calling this method would look like this
Pair<String,boolean> result = returnSomething();
// Retrieve status
boolean status = result.getFirst();
// Retrieve error message (This is null if an exception was caught!)
String errorMessage = result.getSecond();

Exceptions can't go outside, it has to be handled here.
I must say this restriction can only make the interface more difficult to use. Assume you want to return something for the caller to check whether an exception happened in this method, while the caller can ignore the returned value no matter what. So I guess you want to give the caller some flexibility: that he/she doesn't need to bother with the final result if possible. But with the exception approach the caller can still do that, with empty (not recommended) catch clauses.
Exception is the best approach here. Unless "outside" is an environment where exceptions are not supported. Then you have no choice but to come up with something like Try in Scala.

In your case, exceptions should probably be used, not hidden. It's not a result but an error. Learn how to do exception handling in transactions!
Functional programming fanboys will advocate a Monad-like structure, as you can find in the Optional<T> API of Java 8.
I.e. you could return Optional<String> and leave it unset on success (if you do not have a return false and a return true).
For clarity it would be better to build something like this instead with custom classes:
interface Result {}
class BooleanResult implements Result {
boolean result;
public boolean getResult() { return result; }
}
class ErrorResult implements Result {
Exception cause;
public Exception getCause() { return cause; }
}
You could emulate Optional with null values (if you have only one boolean result). On success, return null. Non-null values indicate errors.
String perform() {
try{
...
return null; // No error
} except(Exception e) { // bad code style
return e.getMessage(); // Pray this is never null
}
}
String err = perform();
if (err != null) { throw up; }
Similar APIs are fairly common in old C libraries. Any return value except 0 is an error code. On success, the results are written to a pointer provided at the method call.
You could use Object.
public Object perform() {...}
Object o = perform();
if (o instanceof Boolean) { ...
This is 1980s programming style. This is what PHP does, so it actually is possible in Java! It's just bad because it is no lpnger type safe. This is the worst choice.
I suugest your try 1., 3., 2., 4., 5. in this preference. Or better, only consider the options 1 and 3 at all.
As for option 1. you really should learn how to use try-with-resources. Your transaction is a resource.
When done right, your code will look like this:
try(Transaction a = connection.newTransaction()) {
doSomethingThatMayFail(a);
a.commit();
} // No except here, let try handle this properly
Java will call a.close() even if an exception occurs. Then it will throw the exception upwards. Sour transaction class should have code like this to take care of the rollback:
public void close() {
if (!committed) rollback();
}
This is the most elegant and shortest and safe-to-use approach, as Java ensures close() is called. Throw the Exception, then properly handle it. The code snipped you showed above is an anti-pattern, and known to be very error prone.

If you are using Java 8 you could return an Optional<String>. Then if the code succeeds you return an empty Optional and if there is a failure you return an optional wrapping the failure message.

Throwing exceptions through components, good practice?

When a sub method throws an exception, would encapsulation in a dedicated "package" exception be considered good pratice ?
public String doStuff() throws UtilsException {
try {
throw new NullPointerException("test");
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
throw new UtilsException("something occured", e);
}
}
//use this exception for all classes of this package / component
public class UtilsException extends Exception {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
public UtilsException() {
super();
}
public UtilsException(String message, Throwable cause) {
super(message, cause);
}
public UtilsException(String message) {
super(message);
}
public UtilsException(Throwable cause) {
super(cause);
}
}
Could Optional.empty() be an alternative to avoid throwing/catching of a complex app?
public Optional<String> doStuff() throws UtilsException {
try {
return Optional.of("ok");
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
LOG.error("Something append... {}", e.getMessage());
return Optional.empty();
}
}

First, you should never catch a NullPointerException (or runtime exceptions in general) an return someting else like you are doing.
Ok, maybe there are a very few cases where you need to do that (like a buggy third party api).
Exceptions like those (NullPointer, ClassCast, IllegalArgument, ect) happen when your program has a bug and you should let
them bubble up and handle them in some high order component of your program.
That being said, (and there comes the infamous phrase) it depends...
Exceptions are "responsible" for informing errors,thus they need to be informative for the caller will use them to decide what to do. Consider the following:
public void readFile(String path) throws IOException {
// read file content
return content;
}
try {
return readFile("foo.txt");
} catch(FileNotFound e) {
// For this specific scenario not finding the file is not a problem
return "";
} catch(IOException e) {
// This we are not expecting to happen, if the file exists we should be
// able to read it, otherwise we should inform the user.
log.error(e);
display("We had a problem reading the file, Check the file permissions and try again");
}
As you can see in the example above, you won't want to wrap the IOException in another exception in this case
because you will remove the client's ability to decide what to do when an error happened.
Also, note that the IOException is a form of "wrap" since exceptions are objects too you can use inheritance
to generalize what kind of errors your method throws and then throw more specific errors so the caller can
decide what to do.
When to wrap.
There are cases when wrapping exceptions is a good practice and is the way to go.
For example, if you are creating a lib whose main functionality is to get weather information.
For the first version you kept it simple and used a third party api to get the values for the day.
The main method of your api looks like this.
public Weather getWeather(Date day) throws HTTPException {
return weather.get(day);
}
Your api is doing pretty well but you noticed you're doing too much requests to the weather api and
you will have to start paying for it very soon. You then decided to cache the results in a database table
so you can reduce the amount of requests.
public Weather getWeather(Date day) throws HTTPException, SQLException {
Weather w = getFromCache(day);
if (w != null) {
return w;
} else {
return getAndCache(day);
}
}
Now you have a problem, you can't add this new exception to the throws statement because you will most certainly break
your api's users code.
And if you think about it, your api's users are no interested if you had problems getting the data from the wheter api or
from your cache, they just want to be informed of errors. This is a very good case to wrap those exceptions in
a more generic one, like WeatherFetchException.
As you can see, it really depends...
The rule of thumb to me is, keep your exceptions meaningful and if you want to wrap them, do only when
it makes sense and when it doesn't remove the caller's ability to handle errors.
Wrapping exceptions just for the sake of it is most definitely not a good practice.

Try / Catch in Constructor - Recommended Practice?

Something I've always been curious of
public class FileDataValidator {
private String[] lineData;
public FileDataValidator(String[] lineData){
this.lineData = lineData;
removeLeadingAndTrailingQuotes();
try
{
validateName();
validateAge();
validateTown();
}
catch(InvalidFormatException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
//validation methods below all throwing InvalidFormatException
Is is not advisable to include the try/catch block within my Constructor?
I know I could have the Constructor throw the Exception back to the caller. What do you guys prefer in calling methods like I have done in Constructor? In the calling class would you prefer creating an instance of FileDataValidator and calling the methods there on that instance? Just interested to hear some feedback!

In the code you show, the validation problems don't communicate back to the code that is creating this object instance. That's probably not a GOOD THING.
Variation 1:
If you catch the exception inside the method/constructor, be sure to pass something back to the caller. You could put a field isValid that gets set to true if all works. That would look like this:
private boolean isValid = false;
public FileDataValidator(String[] lineData){
this.lineData = lineData;
removeLeadingAndTrailingQuotes();
try
{
validateName();
validateAge();
validateTown();
isValid = true;
}
catch(InvalidFormatException e)
{
isValid = false;
}
}
public boolean isValid() {
return isValid;
}
Variation 2:
Or you could let the exception or some other exception propagate to the caller. I have shown it as a non-checked exception but do whatever works according to your exception handling religion:
public FileDataValidator(String[] lineData){
this.lineData = lineData;
removeLeadingAndTrailingQuotes();
try
{
validateName();
validateAge();
validateTown();
}
catch(InvalidFormatException e)
{
throw new com.myco.myapp.errors.InvalidDataException(e.getMessage());
}
}
Variation 3:
The third method I want to mention has code like this. In the calling code you have to call the constructor and then call the build() function which will either work or not.
String[] lineData = readLineData();
FileDataValidator onePerson = new FileDataValidator();
try {
onePerson.build(lineData);
} catch (InvalidDataException e) {
// What to do it its bad?
}
Here is the class code:
public FileDataValidator() {
// maybe you need some code in here, maybe not
}
public void build(String[] lineData){
this.lineData = lineData;
removeLeadingAndTrailingQuotes();
try
{
validateName();
validateAge();
validateTown();
}
catch(InvalidFormatException e)
{
throw new com.myco.myapp.errors.InvalidDataException(e.getMessage());
}
}
Of course, the build() function could use a isValid() method that you call to see if its right but an exception seems the right way to me for the build function.
Variation 4:
The fourth method I want to mention is what I like best. It has code like this. In the calling code you have to call the constructor and then call the build() function which will either work or not.
This sort of follows the way JaxB and JaxRS work, which is a similar situation to what you have.
An external source of data - you have a file, they have an incoming message in XML or JSON format.
Code to build the objects - you have your code, they have their libraries of code working according the specifications in the various JSRs.
Validation is not tied to the building of the objects.
The calling code:
String[] lineData = readLineData();
Person onePerson = new Person();
FileDataUtilities util = new FileDataUtilities();
try {
util.build(onePerson, lineData);
util.validate(onePerson);
} catch (InvalidDataException e) {
// What to do it its bad?
}
Here is the class code where the data lives:
public class Person {
private Name name;
private Age age;
private Town town;
... lots more stuff here ...
}
And the utility code to build and validate:
public FileDataValidator() {
// maybe you need some code in here, maybe not
}
public void build(Person person, String[] lineData){
this.lineData = lineData;
removeLeadingAndTrailingQuotes();
setNameFromData(person);
setAgeFromData(person);
setTownFromData(person);
}
public boolean validate(Person person) {
try
{
validateName(person);
validateAge(person);
validateTown(person);
return true;
}
catch(InvalidFormatException e)
{
throw new com.myco.myapp.errors.InvalidDataException(e.getMessage());
}
}

You should consider the static factory pattern. Make your all-arguments constructor private. Provide a static FileDataValidator(args...) method. This accepts and validates all the arguments. If everything is fine, it can call the private constructor and return the newly created object. If anything fails, throw an Exception to inform the caller that it provided bad values.
I must also mention that this:
catch (Exception e) {
printSomeThing(e);
}
Is the deadliest antipattern you could do with Exceptions. Yes, you can read some error values on the command line, and then? The caller (who provided the bad values) doesn't get informed of the bad values, the program execution will continue.

My preference is for exceptions to be dealt with by the bit of code that knows how to deal with them. In this case I would assume that the bit of code creating a FileDataValidator knows what should happen if the file data is not valid, and the exceptions should be dealt with there (I am advocating propagating to the caller).
Whilst discussing best practice - the class name FileDataValidator smells to me. If the object you're creating stores file data then I would call it FileData - perhaps with a validate method? If you only want to validate your file data then a static method would suffice.

Throwing and logging Exceptions, a better way

Ultimately, i'd like to
if (badThingsHappen) {
log the issue
throw exception with description
}
The obvious redundancy here is that often exception description and the message to be logged is (often) the same.
This looks needlessly verbose
if (badThingsHappen) {
logger.error("oh no! not again!");
throw new AppException("oh no! not again!");
}
Declaring temporary String feels wrong
if (badThingsHappen) {
String m = "oh no! not again!";
logger.error(m);
throw new AppException(m);
}
Is it ok to have Exception's constructor handle the logging? Is there a better (cleaner) way?

You could use a utility method:
public class AppException extends Exception {
public static AppException logAndThrow(Logger logger, String message) throws AppException {
AppException e = new AppException(message);
// log the stack trace as well
logger.error(message, e);
throw e;
}
}
and the use it:
if (badThingsHappen) {
AppException.logAndThrow(logger, "oh no! not again!");
}

I usually prefer to log exceptions when I catch them, rather then when I throw them.
This cleans up the logs quite a bit more, and also lets the "client" code handle the exception and information output much more precisely, since the information you want to associate with the exception when logging can be dependent of context.
If you do want to log as soon as it happens, I would build the exception and log it before throwing, something like:
if(badthingshappen){
Exception e = new Exception("holy $%##");
logger.log(e);
throw e;
}
A bit verbose yes... but this is java.

Typically when working with Exceptions and logging requirements I include logging support in the Exceptions.
Exceptions typically inherit from a Base Exception class in our project and it has hooks for logging log4j or other logging utilities.
class Problem extends java.lang.Exception {
private boolean debug=false;
public Problem(String message) {
if(debug) {
logging.exception(message);
/* Maybe a stack trace? */
}
}
}

I just wrote an error-logging method myself, today (this is used to log errors if they occur in a listener method, so it's also logging the method in which the error occurred and the object in which the listener is implemented to help tracking):
protected void listenerError(String listenerMethodName, Object listener,
RuntimeException e) {
logger.error("Exception while calling " + listenerMethodName
+ " on object " + listener, e);
throw e;
}
I wrote it in the class in question (or the base class, to be exact), because you probably want to use the logger in that class (and all subclasses). Another option would be to create a utility method in a utility class (I would not write an Exception class for it), and provide the logger as parameter:
class ExceptionUtil {
public static error(Exception e, Logger logger) {
logger.error(e);
throw e;
}
}
You can, of course, provide the method and object as params for this method (or an overloaded version of it), as necessary.

chaining constructors in Java without throwing exceptions from the default constructor

I've read this: Can I use throws in constructor? -- which gave me the right idea, and led me to one answer, but was not very explicit. I've also read several others, but could not find my answer. To recap what I've learned for context, essentially, this will not compile...
public ExampleClass(String FileName)
{
this(new FileInputStream(FileName));
}
public ExampleClass(FileInputStream FileStream)
{
DoSomethingToSetupBasedUponFileStream(FileStream);
}
...because the FileInputStream constructor (called from the String Constructor) may throw a FileNotFoundException. You can still create the constructor by making it throw the same exception as follows:
public ExampleClass(String FileName) throws FileNotFoundException
{
this(new FileInputStream(FileName));
}
My question is related to a default constructor (no arguments) that would simply use a default filename String constant:
public ExampleClass() throws FileNotFoundException
{
this(DEFAULT_FILE_NAME);
}
This would chain the constructors as:
ExampleClass() --> ExampleClass(<String>) --> ExampleClass(<InputFileStream>)
In a case like this, is it possible to use a default value (static final class member) in the default constructor, to instantiate (further down the chain) a FileInputStream, but not have to use the throws FileNotFoundException code (which would require someone using the class to either re-throw or handle the exception?
If I could do something like the following, I would handle the exception myself:
public ExampleClass()
{
try
{
this(DEFAULT_FILE_NAME);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
DoSomethingToHandleException(e);
}
}
...However, as far as I know this is not possible, because the "Constructor call must be the first statement in a constructor"
Being more used to .Net at this point, I've never been forced to deal with exceptions if I didn't really want to... :D

Refactor your file construction code out of your constructor, so you could do something like this --
public ExampleClass() {
try {
fileInputStreamMethod(DEFAULT_FILE);
}
catch(Exception e) {
...
}
public ExampleClass(String fileName) throws Exception {
fileInputStreamMethod(fileName);
}
private void fileInputStreamMethod(String fileName) throws Exception {
// your file handling methods
}

You are correct that you cannot catch an exception from the call to this(...).
You could use a static method to produce what you want:
static ExampleClass createDefault()
{
try
{
return new ExampleClass(DEFAULT_FILE_NAME);
}
catch(Exception e)
{
DoSomethingToHandleException(e)
}
}

You could do something like this:
public ExampleClass(String FileName)
{
this(getStream(FileName));
}
private static FileInputStream getStream(String name) {
try {
return new FileInputStream(name);
} catch (Exception e) {
// log error
return null;
}
}
The real question is, why would you not want to throw an exception? How should your program behave if the file cannot be opened? I think it would be unusual that you would want it to proceed as if there were no problem. Quite likely, the null input stream will cause grief later on.
In general, you're better off throwing an exception as close to the source of an error as possible.

Basically what you have to do is do the work that your constructor has to do in a different method(something that's not a constructor) and then use it in the default constructor. But am not sure how useful this technique is in your scenario.
cheers!