Question

I have a custom class with constructor, the class is setup such that it would legitly fail to init in some conditions. How do I return nothing?

Answer 1

You can’t return anything from a constructor, it’s there to initialize.

There are a couple of things you could do, depending on the situation:

1. If the failiure to initialize is an exceptional circumstance, throw an exception and catch it using a Try block:

   Public Sub New()
       '... fail to initialize
       Throw New ApplicationException("Some problem") 'Or whatever type of exception is appropriate
   End Sub
   

2. If it fails a lot and you can’t filter input or anything, make the constructor Private and construct in a Shared method:

   Public Shared Function CreateMyObject()
       If someFailure Then
           Return Nothing
       End If
   
       Return New MyObject() 'Or something
   End Function