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Exception chaining
Often you want to catch one exception and throw another, but still keep the information about the originating exception—this is called exception chaining. Prior to JDK 1.4, programmers had to write their own code to preserve the original exception information, but now all Throwable subclasses may take a cause object in their constructor. The cause is intended to be the originating exception, and by passing it in you maintain the stack trace back to its origin, even though you’re creating and throwing a new exception at this point.
It’s interesting to note that the only Throwable subclasses that provide the cause argument in the constructor are the three fundamental exception classes Error (used by the JVM to report system errors), Exception, and RuntimeException. If you want to chain any other exception types, you do it through the initCause( ) method rather than the constructor.
Here’s an example that allows you to dynamically add fields to a DynamicFields object at run time:
//: c09:DynamicFields.java
// A Class that dynamically adds fields to itself.
// Demonstrates exception chaining.
// {ThrowsException}
import com.bruceeckel.simpletest.*;
class DynamicFieldsException extends Exception {}
public class DynamicFields {
private static Test monitor = new Test();
private Object[][] fields;
public DynamicFields(int initialSize) {
fields = new Object[initialSize][2];
for(int i = 0; i < initialSize; i++)
fields[i] = new Object[] { null, null };
}
public String toString() {
StringBuffer result = new StringBuffer();
for(int i = 0; i < fields.length; i++) {
result.append(fields[i][0]);
result.append(": ");
result.append(fields[i][1]);
result.append("\n");
}
return result.toString();
}
private int hasField(String id) {
for(int i = 0; i < fields.length; i++)
if(id.equals(fields[i][0]))
return i;
return -1;
}
private int
getFieldNumber(String id) throws NoSuchFieldException {
int fieldNum = hasField(id);
if(fieldNum == -1)
throw new NoSuchFieldException();
return fieldNum;
}
private int makeField(String id) {
for(int i = 0; i < fields.length; i++)
if(fields[i][0] == null) {
fields[i][0] = id;
return i;
}
// No empty fields. Add one:
Object[][]tmp = new Object[fields.length + 1][2];
for(int i = 0; i < fields.length; i++)
tmp[i] = fields[i];
for(int i = fields.length; i < tmp.length; i++)
tmp[i] = new Object[] { null, null };
fields = tmp;
// Reursive call with expanded fields:
return makeField(id);
}
public Object
getField(String id) throws NoSuchFieldException {
return fields[getFieldNumber(id)][1];
}
public Object setField(String id, Object value)
throws DynamicFieldsException {
if(value == null) {
// Most exceptions don't have a "cause" constructor.
// In these cases you must use initCause(),
// available in all Throwable subclasses.
DynamicFieldsException dfe =
new DynamicFieldsException();
dfe.initCause(new NullPointerException());
throw dfe;
}
int fieldNumber = hasField(id);
if(fieldNumber == -1)
fieldNumber = makeField(id);
Object result = null;
try {
result = getField(id); // Get old value
} catch(NoSuchFieldException e) {
// Use constructor that takes "cause":
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
fields[fieldNumber][1] = value;
return result;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
DynamicFields df = new DynamicFields(3);
System.out.println(df);
try {
df.setField("d", "A value for d");
df.setField("number", new Integer(47));
df.setField("number2", new Integer(48));
System.out.println(df);
df.setField("d", "A new value for d");
df.setField("number3", new Integer(11));
System.out.println(df);
System.out.println(df.getField("d"));
Object field = df.getField("a3"); // Exception
} catch(NoSuchFieldException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
} catch(DynamicFieldsException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
monitor.expect(new String[] {
"null: null",
"null: null",
"null: null",
"",
"d: A value for d",
"number: 47",
"number2: 48",
"",
"d: A new value for d",
"number: 47",
"number2: 48",
"number3: 11",
"",
"A value for d",
"Exception in thread \"main\" " +
"java.lang.RuntimeException: " +
"java.lang.NoSuchFieldException",
"\tat DynamicFields.main(DynamicFields.java:98)",
"Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchFieldException",
"\tat DynamicFields.getFieldNumber(" +
"DynamicFields.java:37)",
"\tat DynamicFields.getField(DynamicFields.java:58)",
"\tat DynamicFields.main(DynamicFields.java:96)"
});
}
} ///:~
Each DynamicFields object contains an array of Object-Object pairs. The first object is the field identifier (a String), and the second is the field value, which can be any type except an unwrapped primitive. When you create the object, you make an educated guess about how many fields you need. When you call setField( ), it either finds the existing field by that name or creates a new one, and puts in your value. If it runs out of space, it adds new space by creating an array of length one longer and copying the old elements in. If you try to put in a null value, then it throws a DynamicFieldsException by creating one and using initCause( ) to insert a NullPointerException as the cause.
As a return value, setField( ) also fetches out the old value at that field location using getField( ), which could throw a NoSuchFieldException. If the client programmer calls getField( ), then they are responsible for handling NoSuchFieldException, but if this exception is thrown inside setField( ), it’s a programming error, so the NoSuchFieldException is converted to a RuntimeException using the constructor that takes a cause argument.
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