Which type of exception should be generalized or created a base class for in a Java architecture [closed]

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As a team lead which type of exception should I create a base class for in my architecture - checked or unchecked ? My team would start development in a few weeks and I want the architecture to be conducive to them for usage. Any reasons around that would also help.

Answer 1

That depends on the situation.

You use checked exceptions (extend Exception) for things that can go wrong regardless of the input the caller of the method passes. For example, network connections; you can make an HTTP GET request by calling client.get("google.com"); and everything goes well, two minutes later you call once again client.get("google.com"); and then you get an exception because of a network error. As you can see, here you called the same method passing the exact same input "google.com", yet you can get an exception at anytime. Therefore, you must force the caller to catch the exception by making it "checked", so that they handle those cases in which a network error occurs.

You use unchecked exceptions (extend RuntimeException) when the error happens because of some sort of invalid input by the caller of the method. For example, you have the method Integer.parse(String);. The method cannot work properly if you pass a null string here, so you throw an exception if that happens. This case, you should not force the caller to catch it, because the caller is responsible of passing the right input.

Answer 2

Overall: let the them decide, start with a short discussion. Helps people getting to know each-other. I'd avoid checked exceptions: since they need to be explicitly catched, the catch block could become part of the normal program flow. Increases complexity and thus chance of introducing bugs. Also don't use custom exceptions when possible, use existing exceptions like IllegalArgumentException. Avoid NullPointerExceptions by never returning null. Furthermore try to use something like bean-validation. That can save a lot of errors in your code caused by invalid (combinations of) arguments. And last but not least, failing fast is better then making your own faulty retry logic.