Python Language Exceptions

Internal

• Python Language
• Pytest Testing Idioms | Tested Code is Supposed to Throw Exception

Overview

Exceptions are Python's main error handling mechanism. try/except is a language-level mechanism to handle errors that may be caused by a section of the code. Exceptions can be triggered explicitly from the program code with raise. A convenient way to conditionally trigger an exception (AssertionError) in the code, use assert.

try/except

try/except is a language-level mechanism to handle errors (traceback) that may be caused by a section of the code. This syntax eliminates tracebacks.

try:
  # do something
except:
  # execute if the previous block caused an error

The code provided under except is referred to as "exception handler". If an exception occurs in a try block and it is not caught in the corresponding except block, it bubbles up until is caught by a matching handler, in the calling layers. If no exception handler is found, Python prints and error message and some information about where the error occurred and then terminates the program.

If more than one type of exception could occur, it is best to provide a separate exception handler for each:

try:
  # do something
except SomeError as ex:
  # exception handler for 'SomeError'
except SomeOtherError as ex:
  # exception handler for 'SomeOtherError'
finally:
  # optional block to execute whether there are exceptions or not

The reserved word as is used to store the caught exception into a variable for further introspection.

finally

The finally block is optional. If specified, is executed regardless of whether there was an exception or not, and after the exception was handled, if there was an exceptions.

Introspecting Exceptions

TODO

raise

Avoid raising generic Exceptions, try to be specific as possible with the exception type and use the most specific exception type that semantically fits the issue.

raise ValueError('function invoked with no arguments')

assert

The assert statement can be used to trigger an AssertionError conditionally. It can be use with an optional error message, which is becoming part of the exception if the assertion proves false:

assert s is not None

assert s is not None, 'The string was supposed to be set!'

Exception Chaining

Exceptions can be chained, which preserves tracebacks:

raise RuntimeError('specific message') from error

Predefined Exceptions

https://docs.python.org/3/library/exceptions.html

Some exceptions are predefined in the Python Standard Library.

BaseException
 ├─ SystemExit
 ├─ KeyboardInterrupt
 ├─ GeneratorExit
 └─ Exception
     ├─ StopIteration
     ├─ StopAsyncIteration
     ├─ ArithmeticError
     │   ├─ FloatingPointError
     │   ├─ OverflowError
     │   └─ ZeroDivisionError
     ├─ AssertionError
     ├─ AttributeError
     ├─ BufferError
     ├─ EOFError
     ├─ ImportError
     │   └─ ModuleNotFoundError
     ├─ LookupError
     │    ├─ IndexError
     │    └─ KeyError
     ├─ MemoryError
     ├─ NameError
     │    └─ UnboundLocalError
     ├─ OSError
     │    ├─ BlockingIOError
     │    ├─ ChildProcessError
     │    ├─ ConnectionError
     │    │    ├─ BrokenPipeError
     │    │    ├─ ConnectionAbortedError
     │    │    ├─ ConnectionRefusedError
     │    │    └─ ConnectionResetError
     │    ├─ FileExistsError
     │    ├─ FileNotFoundError
     │    ├─ InterruptedError
     │    ├─ IsADirectoryError
     │    ├─ NotADirectoryError
     │    ├─ PermissionError
     │    ├─ ProcessLookupError
     │    ├─ TimeoutError
     ├─ ReferenceError
     ├─ RuntimeError
     │    ├─ NotImplementedError
     │    └─ RecursionError
     ├─ SyntaxError
     │    └─ IndentationError
     │         └─ TabError
     ├─ SystemError
     ├─ TypeError
     ├─ ValueError
     │    └─ UnicodeError
     │         ├─ UnicodeDecodeError
     │         ├─ UnicodeEncodeError
     │         └─ UnicodeTranslateError
     └─ Warning
          ├─ DeprecationWarning
          ├─ PendingDeprecationWarning
          ├─ RuntimeWarning
          ├─ SyntaxWarning
          ├─ UserWarning
          ├─ FutureWarning
          ├─ ImportWarning
          ├─ UnicodeWarning
          ├─ BytesWarning
          ├─ EncodingWarning
          └─ ResourceWarning

Defining Custom Exceptions

A custom exception is a class, a child of class Exception.

class CustomException(Exception):
  pass