Question

I have two static methods that I want to use for error handling. One of which passes the exception object and the other is just used if needing to report an error which would be a text based message (string errorMessage).

The code within the two methods is pretty much the same with the exception of how the message is build up and sent to a log file. How can I refactor this so that I’m not duplicating code?

public static void ReportError(Exception exceptionRaised, string reference, string customMessage, bool sendEmail)
{
    // get filename
    // check if logfile exists, blah, blah
    // build up message from exception, reference & custom message using string builder
    // save message
    // email error (if set)
}

public static void ReportError(string errorMessage, string reference, bool sendEmail)
{
    // get filename
    // check if logfile exists, blah, blah
    // build up message from errorMessage & reference string builder
    // save message
    // email error (if set)
}

Thanks.

Answer 1

One simple solution would be to extract the duplicate code into it’s own method, like this:

public static void ReportError(Exception exceptionRaised, string reference, string customMessage, bool sendEmail)
{
    // build up message from exception, reference & custom message using string builder
    ProcessError(Message, SendEmail)
}

public static void ReportError(string errorMessage, string reference, bool sendEmail)
{
    // build up message from errorMessage & reference string builder
    ProcessError(Message, SendEmail)
}

private static void ProcessError(string message, bool sendEmail)
{
    // get filename
    // check if logfile exists, blah, blah
    // save message
    // email error (if set)
}

This is certainly not the most elegant way to do it, but it is a start 😉