Hello, is there a more idiomatic way to catch all...

# coroutines

[Paulius Ruminas]

Hello,

is there a more idiomatic way to catch all errors but CancellationException? Cancelling the job is a normal operation that is not considered as an error. Code snippet:

job = scope.launch {
                    try {
                         // proccess the action
                    } catch (e: CancellationException) {
                        throw e
                    } catch (e: Throwable) {
                        // log the error
                    }
 }

[reline]

how’s this?

job = scope.launch {
                    try {
                         // proccess the action
                    } catch (e: Throwable) {
                        coroutineContext.ensureActive()
                        // log the error
                    }
 }

[Marc Knaup]

Wouldn’t the stack trace of the initial exception be lost?

[Marc Knaup]

What about a one-line check in the catch block? It’s still repetitive but at least you won’t need two catch blocks.

if (e is CancellationException) throw e

Or make it an extension function:

e.rethrowCancellation()

[Paulius Ruminas]

The thing is that when we onboard new developers that are not familiar with coroutines they forget/do not know yet to bubble the CancellationException when catching all errors. I see a lot of Job was cancelled in our kibana logs which are just job cancellations not real errors so I was wondering is there a different approach.

[reline]

@Marc Knaup hmm, in the case that a CancellationException was not thrown and by the time you call ensureActive() the coroutine is no longer active then yes, you’re correct. Is that possible?

[Marc Knaup]

Would be nice if CancellationException would just be a Throwable and catch-all is just e: Exception.
Catching Throwable is still evil, isn’t it? 😄

[Paulius Ruminas]

It is but it's a worker function that needs to keep processing other actions event if one fails.

[Marc Knaup]

Sure it does. But non-exceptions are usually Error and that means something is REALLY wrong (like OutOfMemoryError).
I’d rather restart the server then and fix asap than trying to keep a potentially unstable JVM alive.

[Marc Knaup]

You could also be very hacky and make your logging function rethrow CancellationException instead of logging it 😂

[Marc Knaup]

.logIfNotCancel 🙂

[Marc Knaup]

Or actually if it’s just about logging then make it a reusable functionality!
No need to always wrap all launch code into try … catch (Throwable)

[Marc Knaup]

scope.launchWithExceptionLogging { … }

[Marc Knaup]

I think it can be done even without a custom extension by installing an exception handler in your coroutine context(s).

[Marc Knaup]

https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.coroutines/blob/master/docs/exception-handling.md#coroutineexceptionhandler

[gildor]

I prefer explicit exception management with try/catch instead of exceptionhandler

[Marc Knaup]

Even if it’s just for the purpose of logging all exceptions except one kind?
Possibly across hundreds of call-sites?
🤔

[gildor]

Depends on use case, if it's just simple launch + try/catch I would just write extension function.
Also, to use exception handler you have to add to all contexts, also it doesn't work for non-supervisor job. So I don't see how it would be better than explicit logging, which also more flexible (you want just log and rethrow, or you want log and return default value or just ignore and cancel)