Question

Should a method (remote method call) return a boolean true value indicating that an operation performed successfully even if all possible exceptions are thrown?

Example:

In my java application have many CRUD remote method calls and I catch all possible Exceptions and throw a Custom Exception to the calling client.

Should I now return void or a boolean, since the Exceptions already implicitly indicate the success or failure of the operation?

Answer 1

Return void, not a boolean in this case.

Exceptions are for exceptional conditions. Why indicating something like the success or failure of an operation on two different channels? The DRY principle teaches us:

Don’t repeat yourself

I would only use a boolean to indicate further information, like it is sometimes done on collections, reporting whether an item was found for removal.