Exceptions for Go as a Library

by Tim Henderson ([email protected])

Copyright 2016, Licensed under the GPL version 2. Please reach out to me directly if you require another licensing option. I am willing to work with you.

Documentation

• 
• Explanation of Implementation
• Explanation of Inheritance

Explanation

Go (golang) lacks support for exceptions found in many other languages. There are good reasons for Go to not include exceptions. For instance, by making error handling explicit the programmer is forced to think concretely about the correct action to take. Fined grained control over the handling of errors using multiple return parameters is one of Go's strengths.

However, there are cases where Go programs do not universally benefit from the explicit handling of errors. For instance, consider the following code:

func DoStuff(a, b, c interface{}) error {
	x, err := foo(a)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	y, err := bar(b, x)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	z, err := bax(c, x, y)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	return baz(x, y, z)
}

If Go had exceptions such code could be easily simplified:

func DoStuff(a, b, c interface{}) throws error {
	x := foo(a)
	y := bar(b, x)
	baz(x, y, bax(c, x, y)
}

This library allow you to write go with exceptions and try-catch-finally blocks. It is not appropriate for all situations but can simplify some application code. Libraries and external APIs should continue to conform to the Go standard of returning error values.

Here is an example of the DoStuff function where foo, bar and baz all throw exceptions instead of returning errors. (We will look at the case where they return errors that you want to turn into exceptions next). We want DoStuff to be an public API function and return an error:

func DoStuff(a, b, c interface{}) error {
	return exc.Try(func() {
		x := foo(a)
		y := bar(b, x)
		baz(x, y, bax(c, x, y)
	}).Error()
}

Now let's consider the case where we want to catch the exception log and reraise it:

func DoStuff(a, b, c interface{}) error {
	return exc.Try(func() {
		x := foo(a)
		y := bar(b, x)
		baz(x, y, bax(c, x, y)
	}).Catch(&exc.Exception{}, func(t exc.Throwable) {
		log.Log(t)
		exc.Rethrow(t, exc.Errorf("rethrow after logging"))
	}).Error()
}

Rethrow will chain the Throwable t with the new *Error created such that if/when the exception reaches the top level you know exactly how it was created and where it was rethrown.

Ok, what about interacting with regular Go APIs which return errors? How can we turn those errors into exceptions? The easy was is to use the ThrowOnError function which is a sugar for:

if err != nil {
	ThrowErr(ErrorFrom(err)
}

So converting out original DoStuff function we get

func DoStuff(a, b, c interface{}) { // Throws
	x, err := foo(a)
	exc.ThrowOnError(err)
	y, err := bar(b, x)
	exc.ThrowOnError(err)
	z, err := bax(c, x, y)
	exc.ThrowOnError(err)
	exc.ThrowOnError(baz(x, y, z))
}

This package also supports: catching user defined exceptions, catching multiple exception types, Close which works like the "try with resources" construct in Java 7+, (multiple) finally blocks, and a choice between propogating exceptions with Unwind or retrieving the error/exception with Error and Exception functions.

One Gotcha! The Try() function creates a *Block struct. To execute the block you must either call: Unwind, Error, or Exception. Unwind executes the block, if there is an exception coming out of the block it continues to cause the program stack unwind. Error and Exception excute the block, but return the exception as a value to deal with in the usual Go way.