How to handle errors with boto3?

Solution 1:

Use the response contained within the exception. Here is an example:

import boto3
from botocore.exceptions import ClientError

try:
    iam = boto3.client('iam')
    user = iam.create_user(UserName='fred')
    print("Created user: %s" % user)
except ClientError as e:
    if e.response['Error']['Code'] == 'EntityAlreadyExists':
        print("User already exists")
    else:
        print("Unexpected error: %s" % e)

The response dict in the exception will contain the following:

• ['Error']['Code'] e.g. 'EntityAlreadyExists' or 'ValidationError'
• ['ResponseMetadata']['HTTPStatusCode'] e.g. 400
• ['ResponseMetadata']['RequestId'] e.g. 'd2b06652-88d7-11e5-99d0-812348583a35'
• ['Error']['Message'] e.g. "An error occurred (EntityAlreadyExists) ..."
• ['Error']['Type'] e.g. 'Sender'

For more information see:

• boto3 error handling
• botocore error handling

[Updated: 2018-03-07]

The AWS Python SDK has begun to expose service exceptions on clients (though not on resources) that you can explicitly catch, so it is now possible to write that code like this:

import botocore
import boto3

try:
    iam = boto3.client('iam')
    user = iam.create_user(UserName='fred')
    print("Created user: %s" % user)
except iam.exceptions.EntityAlreadyExistsException:
    print("User already exists")
except botocore.exceptions.ParamValidationError as e:
    print("Parameter validation error: %s" % e)
except botocore.exceptions.ClientError as e:
    print("Unexpected error: %s" % e)

Unfortunately, there is currently no documentation for these errors/exceptions but you can get a list of the core errors as follows:

import botocore
import boto3
[e for e in dir(botocore.exceptions) if e.endswith('Error')]

Note that you must import both botocore and boto3. If you only import botocore then you will find that botocore has no attribute named exceptions. This is because the exceptions are dynamically populated into botocore by boto3.

You can get a list of service-specific exceptions as follows (replace iam with the relevant service as needed):

import boto3
iam = boto3.client('iam')
[e for e in dir(iam.exceptions) if e.endswith('Exception')]

[Updated: 2021-09-07]

In addition to the aforementioned client exception method, there is also a third-party helper package named aws-error-utils.

Solution 2:

I found it very useful, since the Exceptions are not documented, to list all exceptions to the screen for this package. Here is the code I used to do it:

import botocore.exceptions
def listexns(mod):
    #module = __import__(mod)
    exns = []
    for name in botocore.exceptions.__dict__:
        if (isinstance(botocore.exceptions.__dict__[name], Exception) or
            name.endswith('Error')):
            exns.append(name)
    for name in exns:
        print('%s.%s is an exception type' % (str(mod), name))
    return

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    if len(sys.argv) <= 1:
        print('Give me a module name on the $PYTHONPATH!')
    print('Looking for exception types in module: %s' % sys.argv[1])
    listexns(sys.argv[1])

Which results in:

Looking for exception types in module: boto3
boto3.BotoCoreError is an exception type
boto3.DataNotFoundError is an exception type
boto3.UnknownServiceError is an exception type
boto3.ApiVersionNotFoundError is an exception type
boto3.HTTPClientError is an exception type
boto3.ConnectionError is an exception type
boto3.EndpointConnectionError is an exception type
boto3.SSLError is an exception type
boto3.ConnectionClosedError is an exception type
boto3.ReadTimeoutError is an exception type
boto3.ConnectTimeoutError is an exception type
boto3.ProxyConnectionError is an exception type
boto3.NoCredentialsError is an exception type
boto3.PartialCredentialsError is an exception type
boto3.CredentialRetrievalError is an exception type
boto3.UnknownSignatureVersionError is an exception type
boto3.ServiceNotInRegionError is an exception type
boto3.BaseEndpointResolverError is an exception type
boto3.NoRegionError is an exception type
boto3.UnknownEndpointError is an exception type
boto3.ConfigParseError is an exception type
boto3.MissingParametersError is an exception type
boto3.ValidationError is an exception type
boto3.ParamValidationError is an exception type
boto3.UnknownKeyError is an exception type
boto3.RangeError is an exception type
boto3.UnknownParameterError is an exception type
boto3.AliasConflictParameterError is an exception type
boto3.PaginationError is an exception type
boto3.OperationNotPageableError is an exception type
boto3.ChecksumError is an exception type
boto3.UnseekableStreamError is an exception type
boto3.WaiterError is an exception type
boto3.IncompleteReadError is an exception type
boto3.InvalidExpressionError is an exception type
boto3.UnknownCredentialError is an exception type
boto3.WaiterConfigError is an exception type
boto3.UnknownClientMethodError is an exception type
boto3.UnsupportedSignatureVersionError is an exception type
boto3.ClientError is an exception type
boto3.EventStreamError is an exception type
boto3.InvalidDNSNameError is an exception type
boto3.InvalidS3AddressingStyleError is an exception type
boto3.InvalidRetryConfigurationError is an exception type
boto3.InvalidMaxRetryAttemptsError is an exception type
boto3.StubResponseError is an exception type
boto3.StubAssertionError is an exception type
boto3.UnStubbedResponseError is an exception type
boto3.InvalidConfigError is an exception type
boto3.InfiniteLoopConfigError is an exception type
boto3.RefreshWithMFAUnsupportedError is an exception type
boto3.MD5UnavailableError is an exception type
boto3.MetadataRetrievalError is an exception type
boto3.UndefinedModelAttributeError is an exception type
boto3.MissingServiceIdError is an exception type

Solution 3:

Just an update to the 'no exceptions on resources' problem as pointed to by @jarmod (do please feel free to update your answer if below seems applicable)

I have tested the below code and it runs fine. It uses 'resources' for doing things, but catches the client.exceptions - although it 'looks' somewhat wrong... it tests good, the exception classes are showing and matching when looked into using debugger at exception time...

It may not be applicable to all resources and clients, but works for data folders (aka s3 buckets).

lab_session = boto3.Session() 
c = lab_session.client('s3') #this client is only for exception catching

try:
    b = s3.Bucket(bucket)
    b.delete()
except c.exceptions.NoSuchBucket as e:
    #ignoring no such bucket exceptions
    logger.debug("Failed deleting bucket. Continuing. {}".format(e))
except Exception as e:
    #logging all the others as warning
    logger.warning("Failed deleting bucket. Continuing. {}".format(e))

Hope this helps...