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Try Catch-Handout

This document discusses error handling in JavaScript. It explains how to add try/catch blocks to catch errors, throw exceptions, and handle errors defensively. Some key points covered include: - Passing invalid data like booleans instead of strings to methods can cause errors - Null and undefined values also need to be checked before calling methods - Defensive programming involves validating inputs at the start of functions - The typeof operator can check the type of a value - The throw keyword throws an exception that is caught in catch blocks - Errors are plain objects while exceptions are errors that are thrown - Try blocks contain code that may throw, catch blocks handle thrown errors

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9K views9 pages

Try Catch-Handout

This document discusses error handling in JavaScript. It explains how to add try/catch blocks to catch errors, throw exceptions, and handle errors defensively. Some key points covered include: - Passing invalid data like booleans instead of strings to methods can cause errors - Null and undefined values also need to be checked before calling methods - Defensive programming involves validating inputs at the start of functions - The typeof operator can check the type of a value - The throw keyword throws an exception that is caught in catch blocks - Errors are plain objects while exceptions are errors that are thrown - Try blocks contain code that may throw, catch blocks handle thrown errors

Uploaded by

crazyscientist996
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Section 7 - Try & Catch

Error Handling
In the previous section, we assumed that the value received in the setter is a valid string.

Passing an invalid value


Here we attempt to pass a boolean value.

When we run this code, we get an error:


Uncaught TypeError: value.split is not a function
This is because split() is a method that belongs to strings, and booleans don’t have a split()
method.

Passing Null or Undefined

If we pass a value of null or undefined, we get a different error:


Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘split’ of null/undefined

We cannot call the split method on null or undefined, as it's only available to strings.
In these cases, we would need to add error handling.

Defensive Programming
In situations like this, we should do error handling at the beginning of the function or method.
This is what we call defensive programming.

We want to make sure that the values coming in are valid, they're in the right shape, so we
can execute our logic.

In the first line of this method, we use the typeof operator to check if the type of value is not
equal to (!==) string.

When we pass a null object, it no longer displays a message, and the object does not
change.

Displaying Errors
Sometimes we want to report an error in our application.

That’s when we need to throw an exception.

Throwing an exception is a technical jargon that you might hear in a lot of programming
languages.

Let’s see how that works in JavaScript.

Throwing an Exception
Instead of returning from this method, use the throw keyword and then create a new Error
object.
This Error object is a constructor function, as indicated by the use of Pascal Case.

When we are calling it, we are using the new keyword to create a new Error object.

As an argument to the Error constructor, we can pass a string as the error message:
‘Value is not a string’

This is how we throw exceptions

Errors & Throwing Exceptions


Some people confuse errors with exceptions, but there is a slight difference between the
two.

First we can create an error object and assign it to a variable called e.

This is just a plain JavaScript object, there's nothing special about this.

But the moment you throw this error, we refer to that as an exception.

Because this is an exceptional situation that should not have happened.

Error Handling
Now we have some basic error handling in this method, by throwing the exception.
Now somewhere else we will need to catch that exception, and display the error.

Try & Catch


We get the error when assigning person.fullName, so we start by wrapping that in a try
block.

A try block can accept 1 or more statements, with at least 1 being able to throw an
exception.
Next we add the catch block, and within parentheses, we pass an identifier.

The identifier is the error object that is thrown in the setter.

In the catch block, we get the error object and do something with it.

We can display it on the console, which is only visible to developers, so an end user will not
see this error.

The proper way is to display a label, perhaps a red label on the user interface.

Throwing the Exception


For now let's just use the built in alert function.

This is not something I'd recommend you to do, because that's a very old and poor way of
reporting errors to users.

When you go to the browser, you should see an alert like this:
Error: Value is not a string
More Error Handling
Instead of null, let’s pass in an empty string.

We don’t get an error, however firstName is set to an empty string, and lastName is
undefined, which is not desirable.

Ideally we want to make sure our users enter a first name and a last name.

When splitting the string, we can check the length of the parts array created.
Here we check if parts.length is not equal to 2, then something must be missing.

Next we throw another exception, so we throw a new Error with the message:
Enter a first and last name.

Recap
When we throw an exception, the lines after the throw statement are not executed.

The throw keyword will jump out of the method, and control flow will move to the catch block,
where we catch the exception and do something with it.

This is basic error handling in JavaScript.

TASKS

1. Error Handling
In an earlier section, we did an exercise to count occurences of a number within an
array

This function has a problem, we are assuming this first argument is a valid array. If
we pass another value, like a boolean, we will get an UncaughtTypeError, because
we are using the array.reduce() method, which is not available to booleans.

The purpose of this exercise is to add error handling to this function.


a. If the first argument is not an array, throw an exception

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