Errors and Exceptions

Built in Error Types

Waystone.Monads provides a set of built in error types for convenience in the case you do not wish to write your own.

record ErrorCode(string Value);
record Error(ErrorCode ErrorCode, string Message);

ErrorCode

The ErrorCode type is a short code representing an error type in the application. These codes should not change between occurrence to occurrence of the same error type. It is recommended to predefine your error codes.

Static Error Codes (recommended)

The simplest way of defining your error codes is to create a static ErrorCodes class that contains the list of error codes that may be encountered during the lifecycle of your application. This class would normally live inside your domain layer if you are following domain driven design.

public static class ErrorCodes
{
    public static readonly ErrorCode InputMissing = new("input.missing");
    public static readonly ErrorCode InputMalformed = new("input.malformed");
    public static readonly ErrorCode InputOutOfRange = new("input.out_of_range");
}

Error Code from Enum

You may want to use enums to define and organise your error codes, and then create ErrorCode instances during runtime from these enums. A factory method has been provided to facilitate this approach.

public enum InputErrors
{
    Missing = 1,
    Malformed = 2,
    OutOfRange = 3
}

public enum RegexErrors // etc.

var errorCode = ErrorCode.FromEnum(InputErrors.Missing); // "InputErrors.Missing"

If you want to customise the error code that is generated from your enum, you can provide your own instance of ErrorCodeFactory to the global MonadOptions and override the FromEnum method.

Error Code from Exception

You may want to use the exception type itself as the source of your error codes when they are caught during runtime. A factory method has been provided to facilitate this approach.

This approach may introduce inconsistencies in your error codes. It also does not work well if you are raising errors that are not caused by exceptions elsewhere in your application.

try
{
    // do work
}
catch (SqlException e)
{
    var errorCode = ErrorCode.FromException(e); // "Err.Sql"
}

If you want to customise the error code that is generated from the Exception, you can provide your own instance of ErrorCodeFactory to the global MonadOptions and override the FromException method.

Error

The Error type captures an instance of an error associated with a specific ErrorCode. Use it to provide human-readable information about the error instance that occurred during runtime.

You must define an ErrorCode before creating an Error

Error error1 = new(ErrorCodes.InputMalformed, "Expected an absolute URI but received a relative URI");
Error error1 = new(ErrorCodes.InputMalformed, "Failed to parse input as a number");

Error from Exception

You may want to create errors on the fly when catching exceptions without having to first define your error code. A factory method has been provided to facilitate this approach. It uses Error Code from Exception under the hood to generate the ErrorCode.

This approach may introduce inconsistencies in your error codes. It also does not work well if you are raising errors that are not caused by exceptions elsewhere in your application.

try
{
    // do work
}
catch (SqlException e)
{
    var error = ErrorCode.FromException(e);
    //  ^? ErrorCode: "Err.Sql", Message: e.Message
}

If you want to customise the error code that is generated from the Exception, you can provide your own instance of ErrorCodeFactory to the global MonadOptions and override the FromException method. See Error Code from Exception for an example.

Custom Exceptions

This library contains some custom exceptions that describe certain scenarios.

UnwrapException

An exception that is thrown when attempting to Unwrap an Option<T> or a Result<T, E> when they are in their None or Err states, or when attempting to UnwrapErr on a Result<T, E> when it is in it's Ok state.

Always check the monad's state before performing an Unwrap or UnwrapErr to avoid encountering this exception.

UnmetExpectationException

An exception that is thrown when when invoking Expect on an Option<T> or a Result<T, E> when they are in their None or Err states, or when invoking ExpectErr on a Result<T, E> when it is in it's Ok state.