Design patterns: exception / error handling

Question

Is there any resource (web or book) describing exception handling / error handling design patterns?

There is a lot of literature on how to write clean code, and there are a lot of books covering design patterns. I have, however, never seen any design pattern covering the issue of where and how best to handle errors and how best to propagate an error appearing in a low-level function up the levels of abstraction.

Answer 1

These patterns and best practices are often bound to a specific platform/language, so they are the first place to look for them.

• Exception patterns wiki is a general patterns resource.

As an example check the following links for java:

• Best Practices for Exception Handling
• 15 Best practices about exception handling
• Exception-Handling Antipatterns

Going through such materials would give you a general idea to follow in exception handling mechanisms.

Also check other SO questions:

• Exception handling pattern
• Java Style: Properly handling exceptions

Answer 2

Best approach is never to swallow any exceptions within your application code. Hookup a handler to unhandled exceptions in your applications when bootstrapping where you can show an error message and do some logging.

Some decent books i've read recommended this approach.

http://thibautvs.com/blog/?p=2238 is a good one where it's mentioned.