NiceTry

A type for the classic try/catch statement that allows functional and bloat free error handling. Inspired by the Try type in Scala. Licensed under the MPL-2.0 License.

Build status

Status of last build

Example

Reading the content type of a url as string and printing it to the console. If any of the lambdas throws an exception the calls to Select and Match would not execute and "An error occured: {error details}." would be printed to the console.

Try.To(() => WebRequest.Create(Url) as HttpWebRequest)
    .Select(request => request.GetResponse()?.ContentType)
    .Match(
        success: contentType => Console.WriteLine($"Content-Type: {contentType}"),
        failure: err => Console.WriteLine($"An error occured: {err}."));

The same can be written using LINQ syntax:

var maybeText =
    from req in Try.To(() => WebRequest.Create(Url) as HttpWebRequest)
    let contentType = req.GetResponse()?.ContentType
    select contentType;

maybeText.Match(
    success: contentType => Console.WriteLine($"Content-Type: {contentType}"),
    failure: err => Console.WriteLine($"An error occured: {err}."));

---

License

The Mozilla Public License Version 2.0

Troubleshooting and support

Did you find a bug or have an idea for a new feature? Open a new Issue.

Contributing

• Read the Code of Conduct
• Take a look at the Issues. If there is one you want to work on (has labels ready and up-for-grabs), write a comment that you want to work on it. If you have a new idea/problem, please open an issue and explain it.
• Fork the repo and clone it on your machine.
• Build the project running build.cmd on Windows or build.sh on Mac OSX/Linux.
• Write your code and don't forget to add xml docs and tests.
• Run the build.* for your platform again to ensure the build works and all tests pass.
• Describe your feature in the README, if applicable (e.g. new combinator).
• Create a pull request.

Versioning

This project uses SemVer compatible versioning, which means Breaking.Feature.Fix.

• Breaking: Changes that break API compatibility with earlier versions.
• Feature: Added functionality that don't break API compatibility with earlier versions.
• Fix: Backwards compatible bugfixes and refactoring/clean up.

Deprecation of features

If a feature becomes deprecated it is marked with the Obsolete attribute and will not throw a compiler error. In the next release it will throw a compiler error and the major version is incremented by 1 because of breaking changes. In the release after that, the feature will be removed and its patch version is incremented by 1.

Example

• 3.1.0.6

[Obsolete("This method is deprecated and will be removed in 2 releases.")]
public bool TryGet(out value) => // ...

• 4.0.0

[Obsolete("This method is deprecated and will be removed in the next release.", true)]
public bool TryGet(out value) => // ...

• 4.0.1

// TryGet removed

Maintainers

• Stefan Reichel (@bomret)

---

Basics

Try and Try<T> represent the successful or failed outcome of an operation. Try<T> might contain a value that was produced by said operation.

Try<int> result = Try.To(() => 1 + 1);

The above example would evaluate 1 + 1 and - because that does not throw an exception - return a Success<T> and store it in the variable result. The result of the calculation is stored inside the Success<T> and can be accessed using the several methods, which are explined below:

// using the Match method
result.Match(
    failure: err => /* an excepton was catched and is provided by err */,
    success: val => /* The operation successfully returned a value provided by val */);

// or using IfSuccess
result.IfSuccess(val => /* The operation successfully returned a value provided by val */);

To find out if result represents success or failure, it provides the boolean properties IsSuccess and IsFailure:

if(result.IsSuccess)
    // do something;

Creating a Try

There are several ways to create an instance of Try or Try<T>.

Try.To

Evaluates an Action or Func<T> synchronously and returns a Success<T> if no exception is thrown or a Failure<T> otherwise.

Try<int> @try = Try.To(() => 1 + 1);

Try.Success

Creates a Try<T> that represents success and wraps the specified value.

Try<int> two = Try.Success(2);

Try.Failure

Creates a Try<T> that represents faliure and wraps the specified exception. Throws an ArgumentNullException when called with null.

Try<int> failure = Try.Failure<int>(exception);

Try.Using

Properly creates, uses and disposes an IDisposable and creates a Try<T> that wraps the outcome of the operation.

Try<string> content = Try.Using(
        () => File.OpenRead("story.txt"),
        stream => stream.ReadToEnd());

Using static imports in C# 6

C# 6 offers the feature to statically import classes and use the static methods therein without having to prefix them with the class name. NiceTry provides a specific module for taking advantage of this feature.

using static NiceTry.Predef

Try<int> two = Ok(2);

Try<int> err = Fail<int>(exception);

Try<int> two = Try(() => 1 + 1);

Try<string> two = Using(() => File.OpenRead("someFile.txt"), stream => stream.ReadToEnd());

Accessing the wrapped value or exception

Try<T> implements a couple of methods to access the wrapped value or exception.

Match

Try.To(() => 1 + 1).Match(
    failure: err => { /* an excepton was catched and is provided by err */ },
    success: val => /* The operation successfully returned a value provided by val */);

Match allows to use a pattern matching like callback registration. Only the appropriate function parameter for success or failure is executed and gets the value or exception to work with.

string result = Try.To(() => 1 + 1).Match(
    failure: err => err.ToString(),
   	success: val => val.ToString());

This overload for Match produces a value. In the above example result would be the string "2".

IfSuccess

Try.To(() => someFunc())
   .IfSuccess(val => /* do something with val */);

IfSuccess is only executed if someFunc does not throw an exception and delegates the produced value to its enclosed callback.

IfFailure

Try.To(() => someFunc())
   .IfFailure(err => /* react to the error */);

IfFailure is only executed if someFunc throws an exception and delegates the catched exception to its enclosed callback.

Recommended usage

Every method that may throw an exception in some circumstances should return a Try<T> instead of the result directly. That way, eventual unexpected exceptions can be avoided. It is adviseable to not catch exceptions that signal developer errors, like ArgumentException or ArgumentNullException for example.

So instead of this:

string DoSomethingThatCouldThrow(string arg) { /* ... */ }

write this:

Try<string> DoSomethingThatCouldThrow(string arg) { /* ... */ }

Combinators

See the docs for a couple of extension methods that make working with Try<T> easier.