Question

So I am using HtmlUnit, and the method’s signature looks like:

public HtmlAnchor getAnchorByText(String text)
                           throws ElementNotFoundException

So this means, the call to this method won’t just return null, but it will throw an exception.

(I find this a pain!!, in c# methods usually just return a null if not found, way easier unless I am missing something??)

So I HAVE to wrap this call in an exception if I don’t want my application to crash right?

How do I do this in Java?

reference: http://htmlunit.sourceforge.net/apidocs/index.html

Answer 1

Bear in mind that ElementNotFoundException is not a checked exception so you could ignore it. But if the element not being there is a valid case that you don’t want an exception thrown in then yes you will have to wrap the code in a try-catch block and deal with it.

I too find this kind of flow-control-by-exceptions painful. The basic construct you want is:

HtmlAnchor anchor = null;
try {
  htmlAnchor = getAnchorByText(text);
} catch (ElementNotFoundException) {
  // do nothing
}

If you find yourself writing this sequence a lot then wrap it in a helper method:

public static HtmlAnchor myFindAnchor(String text) {
  try {
    return getAnchorByText(text);
  } catch (ElementNotFoundException) {
    return null;
  }
}

and call that instead of littering your code with spurious try-catch blocks.