throws Exception in finally blocks

Is there an elegant way to handle exceptions that are thrown in finally block?

For example:

try {
  // Use the resource.
}
catch( Exception ex ) {
  // Problem with the resource.
}
finally {
   try{
     resource.close();
   }
   catch( Exception ex ) {
     // Could not close the resource?
   }
}

How do you avoid the try/catch in the finally block?

Solution 1:

I usually do it like this:

try {
  // Use the resource.
} catch( Exception ex ) {
  // Problem with the resource.
} finally {
  // Put away the resource.
  closeQuietly( resource );
}

Elsewhere:

protected void closeQuietly( Resource resource ) {
  try {
    if (resource != null) {
      resource.close();
    }
  } catch( Exception ex ) {
    log( "Exception during Resource.close()", ex );
  }
}

Solution 2:

I typically use one of the closeQuietly methods in org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils:

public static void closeQuietly(OutputStream output) {
    try {
        if (output != null) {
            output.close();
        }
    } catch (IOException ioe) {
        // ignore
    }
}

Solution 3:

If you're using Java 7, and resource implements AutoClosable, you can do this (using InputStream as an example):

try (InputStream resource = getInputStream()) {
  // Use the resource.
}
catch( Exception ex ) {
  // Problem with the resource.
}

Solution 4:

Arguably a bit over the top, but maybe useful if you're letting exceptions bubble up and you can't log anything from within your method (e.g. because it's a library and you'd rather let the calling code handle exceptions and logging):

Resource resource = null;
boolean isSuccess = false;
try {
    resource = Resource.create();
    resource.use();
    // Following line will only run if nothing above threw an exception.
    isSuccess = true;
} finally {
    if (resource != null) {
        if (isSuccess) {
            // let close throw the exception so it isn't swallowed.
            resource.close();
        } else {
            try {
                resource.close();
            } catch (ResourceException ignore) {
                // Just swallow this one because you don't want it 
                // to replace the one that came first (thrown above).
            }
        }
    }
}

UPDATE: I looked into this a bit more and found a great blog post from someone who has clearly thought about this more than me: http://illegalargumentexception.blogspot.com/2008/10/java-how-not-to-make-mess-of-stream.html He goes one step further and combines the two exceptions into one, which I could see being useful in some cases.