Question

I have a CustomerRepository class (in my BL), and I am returning a collection as follows:

 public static ICollection<Customer> FindCustomers()
    {
        Collection<Customer> customers = null;
        try
        {
           customers = DAL.GetCustomers();             
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            //log and re-throw exception here
        }
        return customers;
    }

I have a few questions on this:

1. Is the try/catch block ok?
2. I am creating the collection outside try, and returning it outside catch.

Am I overlooking any best practices here?

Would love to know about potential gotchas here 🙂

Answer 1

This is fine (and idiomatic)

public static ICollection<Customer> FindCustomers()
{
    try
    {
       return DAL.GetCustomers();         
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        //log and re-throw exception here
    }
}

I would add that returning IQueryable (or if not feasible IEnumerable) is probably a better idea so as to give your class more wiggle room in future as to how the data is arranged.