Java: Try-Catch-Continue?

Question

Let's say I can a set of statements:

try {
  String a = getProperty("a");
  String b = getProperty("b");
  String c = getProperty("c");
} catch(Exception e) {

}

Now, lets say property b was not found and the function throws an exception. In this case, how would I just continue or perhaps set b to null without having to write a try-catch block for each property? I mean, a,b,c exist but sometime they might not be found at all during which an exception is thrown.

Answer 1

Assuming you can't change the function so that it returns null when the property isn't found, you are kind of stuck wrapping everything in its own try catch block -- especially if you want for every value that can be retrieved to be retrieved (as opposed to letting the first value that fails cancel the whole operation.)

If you have a lot of these properties to retrieve, perhaps it would be cleaner to write a helper method to use:

String getPropertySafely(String key) {
   try {
      return getProperty(key);
   } catch (Exception e) {
      return null;
   }
}