Swift do-try-catch syntax

I give it a try to understand new error handling thing in swift 2. Here is what I did: I first declared an error enum:

enum SandwichError: ErrorType {
    case NotMe
    case DoItYourself
}

And then I declared a method that throws an error (not an exception folks. It is an error.). Here is that method:

func makeMeSandwich(names: [String: String]) throws -> String {
    guard let sandwich = names["sandwich"] else {
        throw SandwichError.NotMe
    }

    return sandwich
}

The problem is from the calling side. Here is the code that calls this method:

let kitchen = ["sandwich": "ready", "breakfeast": "not ready"]

do {
    let sandwich = try makeMeSandwich(kitchen)
    print("i eat it \(sandwich)")
} catch SandwichError.NotMe {
    print("Not me error")
} catch SandwichError.DoItYourself {
    print("do it error")
}

After the do line compiler says Errors thrown from here are not handled because the enclosing catch is not exhaustive. But in my opinion it is exhaustive because there is only two case in SandwichError enum.

For regular switch statements swift can understands it is exhaustive when every case handled.

There are two important points to the Swift 2 error handling model: exhaustiveness and resiliency. Together, they boil down to your do/catch statement needing to catch every possible error, not just the ones you know you can throw.

Notice that you don't declare what types of errors a function can throw, only whether it throws at all. It's a zero-one-infinity sort of problem: as someone defining a function for others (including your future self) to use, you don't want to have to make every client of your function adapt to every change in the implementation of your function, including what errors it can throw. You want code that calls your function to be resilient to such change.

Because your function can't say what kind of errors it throws (or might throw in the future), the catch blocks that catch it errors don't know what types of errors it might throw. So, in addition to handling the error types you know about, you need to handle the ones you don't with a universal catch statement -- that way if your function changes the set of errors it throws in the future, callers will still catch its errors.

do {
    let sandwich = try makeMeSandwich(kitchen)
    print("i eat it \(sandwich)")
} catch SandwichError.NotMe {
    print("Not me error")
} catch SandwichError.DoItYourself {
    print("do it error")
} catch let error {
    print(error.localizedDescription)
}

But let's not stop there. Think about this resilience idea some more. The way you've designed your sandwich, you have to describe errors in every place where you use them. That means that whenever you change the set of error cases, you have to change every place that uses them... not very fun.

The idea behind defining your own error types is to let you centralize things like that. You could define a description method for your errors:

extension SandwichError: CustomStringConvertible {
    var description: String {
        switch self {
            case NotMe: return "Not me error"
            case DoItYourself: return "Try sudo"
        }
    }
}

And then your error handling code can ask your error type to describe itself -- now every place where you handle errors can use the same code, and handle possible future error cases, too.

do {
    let sandwich = try makeMeSandwich(kitchen)
    print("i eat it \(sandwich)")
} catch let error as SandwichError {
    print(error.description)
} catch {
    print("i dunno")
}

This also paves the way for error types (or extensions on them) to support other ways of reporting errors -- for example, you could have an extension on your error type that knows how to present a UIAlertController for reporting the error to an iOS user.

I suspect this just hasn’t been implemented properly yet. The Swift Programming Guide definitely seems to imply that the compiler can infer exhaustive matches 'like a switch statement'. It doesn’t make any mention of needing a general catch in order to be exhaustive.

You'll also notice that the error is on the try line, not the end of the block, i.e. at some point the compiler will be able to pinpoint which try statement in the block has unhandled exception types.

The documentation is a bit ambiguous though. I’ve skimmed through the ‘What’s new in Swift’ video and couldn’t find any clues; I’ll keep trying.

Update:

We’re now up to Beta 3 with no hint of ErrorType inference. I now believe if this was ever planned (and I still think it was at some point), the dynamic dispatch on protocol extensions probably killed it off.

Beta 4 Update:

Xcode 7b4 added doc comment support for Throws:, which “should be used to document what errors can be thrown and why”. I guess this at least provides some mechanism to communicate errors to API consumers. Who needs a type system when you have documentation!

Another update:

After spending some time hoping for automatic ErrorType inference, and working out what the limitations would be of that model, I’ve changed my mind - this is what I hope Apple implements instead. Essentially:

// allow us to do this:
func myFunction() throws -> Int

// or this:
func myFunction() throws CustomError -> Int

// but not this:
func myFunction() throws CustomErrorOne, CustomErrorTwo -> Int

Yet Another Update

Apple’s error handling rationale is now available here. There have also been some interesting discussions on the swift-evolution mailing list. Essentially, John McCall is opposed to typed errors because he believes most libraries will end up including a generic error case anyway, and that typed errors are unlikely to add much to the code apart from boilerplate (he used the term 'aspirational bluff'). Chris Lattner said he’s open to typed errors in Swift 3 if it can work with the resilience model.

Swift is worry that your case statement is not covering all cases, to fix it you need to create a default case:

do {
    let sandwich = try makeMeSandwich(kitchen)
    print("i eat it \(sandwich)")
} catch SandwichError.NotMe {
    print("Not me error")
} catch SandwichError.DoItYourself {
    print("do it error")
} catch Default {
    print("Another Error")
}