Proper exception to raise if None encountered as argument
What is the "proper" exception class to raise when one of my functions detects None
passed where an argument value is required? For instance:
def MyFunction(MyArg1, MyArg2):
if not MyArg2:
raise ?Error?
I think I've seen TypeError
used here (and it's true that I'm receiving a NoneType
where some other type is expected) but that doesn't strike me as quite right for this situation where I think the Exception could be more explicit.
There is no "invalid argument" or "null pointer" built-in exception in Python. Instead, most functions raise TypeError
(invalid type such as NoneType
) or ValueError
(correct type, but the value is outside of the accepted domain).
If your function requires an object of a particular class and gets None
instead, it should probably raise TypeError
as you pointed out. In this case, you should check for None
explicitly, though, since an object of correct type may evaluate to boolean False
if it implements __nonzero__
/__bool__
:
if MyArg2 is None:
raise TypeError
Python docs:
-
TypeError
python2 / python3 -
ValueError
python2 / python3
As others have noted, TypeError
or ValueError
would be natural. If it doesn't seem specific enough, you could subclass whichever of the two exceptions is a better fit. This allows consistent handling of invalid arguments for a broad class of functions while also giving you more detail for the particular function.
Most of the python function raises TypeError
if None
is passed as an argument. Take any function say chr(None)
and see it raises TypeError
.
What about creating and using a simple custom NoneException: (maybe it is worth its 2 lines of code)
class NoneError(Exception):
pass
raise NoneError("Object not constructed. Cannot access a 'None' object.")
See Python documentation: https://pythonbasics.org/try-except/#User-defined-Exceptions