Question

I am currently doing a code review and the following code made me jump. I see multiple issues with this code. Do you agree with me? If so, how do I explain to my colleague that this is wrong (stubborn type…)?

• Catch a generic exception (Exception ex)
• The use of ‘if (ex is something)’ instead of having another catch block
• We eat SoapException, HttpException and WebException. But if the Web Service failed, there not much to do.

Code:

try {     // Call to a WebService } catch (Exception ex) {     if (ex is SoapException || ex is HttpException || ex is WebException)     {         // Log Error and eat it.     }     else     {         throw;     } } 

Answer 1

The mantra is:

• You should only catch exceptions if you can properly handle them

Thus:

• You should not catch general exceptions.

---

In your case, yes, you should just catch those exceptions and do something helpful (probably not just eat them–you could throw after you log them).

Your coder is using throw (not throw ex) which is good.

This is how you can catch multiple, specific exceptions:

try {     // Call to a WebService } catch (SoapException ex) {     // Log Error and eat it } catch (HttpException ex) {     // Log Error and eat it } catch (WebException ex) {     // Log Error and eat it } 

This is pretty much equivalent to what your code does. Your dev probably did it that way to avoid duplicating the ‘log error and eat it’ blocks.