Java - ignore exception and continue

Question

For my Java application, I am creating an instance of a user information object and populating it with a service that I don't control the source for.

The code looks like this:

// username given as parameter
UserInfo ui = new UserInfo();
try {
    DirectoryUser du = LDAPService.findUser(username);
    if (du!=null) {
       ui.setUserInfo(du.getUserInfo());
    }
} catch (Exception e) {
    // Whatever
}

If LDAPService.findUser() can't locate a user, it will throw a NullPointerException and grind the rest of my application to a stop. It's okay if the user information isn't populated, so I want to be able to continue without causing everything else to start throwing exceptions.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

I've upvoted Amir Afghani's answer, which seems to be the only one as of yet that actually answers the question.

But I would have written it like this instead:

UserInfo ui = new UserInfo();

DirectoryUser du = null;
try {
    du = LDAPService.findUser(username);
} catch (NullPointerException npe) {
    // It's fine if findUser throws a NPE
}
if (du != null) {
   ui.setUserInfo(du.getUserInfo());
}

Of course, it depends on whether or not you want to catch NPEs from the ui.setUserInfo() and du.getUserInfo() calls.

Answer 2

You could catch the NullPointerException explicitly and ignore it - though its generally not recommended. You should not, however, ignore all exceptions as you're currently doing.

UserInfo ui = new UserInfo();
try {
    DirectoryUser du = LDAPService.findUser(username);
    if (du!=null) {
       ui.setUserInfo(du.getUserInfo());
    }
} catch (NullPointerException npe) {
    // Lulz @ your NPE
    Logger.log("No user info for " +username+ ", will find some way to cope");
}