Error Handling with Exceptions

The basic philosophy of Java is that "badly formed code will not be run."

The ideal time to catch an error is at compile time, before you even try to run the program. However, not all errors can be detected at compile time. The rest of the problems must be handled at run time through some formality that allows the originator of the error to pass appropriate information to a recipient who will know how to handle the difficulty properly.

Improved error recovery is one of the most powerful ways that you can increase the robustness of your code. Error recovery is a fundamental concern for every program you write, but it’s especially important in Java, where one of the primary goals is to create program components for others to use. To create a robust system, each component must be robust. By providing a consistent error-reporting model using exceptions, Java allows components to reliably communicate problems to client code.

The goals for exception handling in Java are to simplify the creation of large, reliable programs using less code than currently possible, and to do so with more confidence that your application doesn’t have an unhandled error. Exceptions are not terribly difficult to learn, and are one of those features that provide immediate and significant benefits to your project.

Because exception handling is the only official way that Java reports errors, and it is enforced by the Java compiler, there are only so many examples that can be written in this book without learning about exception handling. This chapter introduces you to the code that you need to write to properly handle exceptions, and shows how you can generate your own exceptions if one of your methods gets into trouble.