Question

I have the following public interface

public interface Bar{
   public void DoStuff();
}

with an internal back end class

internal class BarImpl : Bar{
   public void DoStuff(){
     // throw exception if invalid state
     // do something
   }
}

The question:

• Only BarImpl implements the Bar interface.
• BarImpl can throw exceptions in the DoStuff method.

Does it make sense to document these exceptions in the Bar.DoStuff xml doc?

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

Yes – this would be the case even if BarImpl isn’t the only implementor.

The example I like to use is the Stream class where the abstract Read method lists a whole load of exceptions that users of a Stream instance might expect to be thrown when using this method, and in turn the implementors of this class should throw under various scenarios.