Question

I have several (more than 20) methods (getXXX()) that may throw an exception (a NotCalculatedException) when they are called.

In another method, I need to access the results given by these methods. For the moment, I have an horrible code, which looks like:

public void myMethod() {
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    // Get 'foo' result...
    sb.append("foo = ");
    try {
        sb.append(getFoo());
    } catch (NotCalculatedException nce) {
        sb.append("not calculated.");
    }
    // Get 'bar' result...
    sb.append("\nbar = ");
    try {
        sb.append(getBar());
    } catch (NotCalculatedException nce) {
        sb.append("not calculated.");
    }
    ...
}

Without modifying the getXXX methods (thus they must keep their throws NotCalculatedException), how would you refactor / simplify myMethod() to make it looks better?

Please note that this project is still using Java 1.4 🙁

---

EDIT

I cannot put all the getXXX() methods in the try { ... } block, as the StringBuffer will be incomplete if one method throws a NotCalculatedException.

public void myMethod() {
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    try {
        sb.append("foo = ");
        sb.append(getFoo());
        sb.append("\nbar = ");
        sb.append(getBar());
    } catch (NotCalculatedException nce) {
        sb.append("not calculated.");
    }
    ...
}

In others words, if getFoo() throws a NotCalculatedException, I want to have this kind of output :

foo = not calculated
bar = xxx
...

If I put everything in one single try { ... }, I will have that output, which I don’t want to get:

foo = not calculated

Answer 1

I don’t think you should use NotCalculatedException to control the logic.

But I have a few idea about it.

1. You need another getter method

   sb.append(this.getFoo(“not calculated”));

2. Create hasValue method

   sb.append(hasFoo()?this.getFoo():”not calculated”);

3. Create a generic getter method

   sb.append(this.getValueByName(“foo”));