Question

I have a piece of code where I capture all exceptions and throw one generic exception at the end. Something like this:

try {
  // do something here
} catch (Whatever e) {
  throw new MyException(e.getMessage());
}

This kind of makes my function definition looks clean, i.e. “myFunc throws MyException” but at the same time I lose the semantics of what caused the problem. On the other hand if I just throw all exceptions, that will make the function body cleaner but the definition of the function will contain 1-5 throw statements.

My question is: what is better?… should I capture all exceptions, keeping the function definition clean, or should I throw everything keeping the body of the function clean?

NOTE: the second approach will also make the exception handling code for my function more difficult…

Answer 1

Why pick one or the other?

try { /* doing useful work */ }
catch (Whatever t) { throw new MyException(t); }

where MyException has a constructor taking a Throwable as a parameter.

In general, I agree with what Krtek and T.J. Crowder has said; throw exceptions that make sense at the level of abstraction you’re working with, whether that means you list one type of exception, or ten.