Best practice for Exceptions

Question

I wrote my own Exception class. When using it, I'm NOT sure what the best practice is.
This is a code snippet for a fire object:
public void doSomething(){
                  try{
                    fire = true;
                    throw new ControllerException("Warning: Reactor meltdown");
               catch(ControllerException e){
                    System.out.println("Warning: Reactor meltdown");
          public String toString(){
                       return "Warning: Reactor meltdown";
                }The fire class extends the abstract Disaster class which means that I have to declare a doSomething() method. It is an overridden method. It will run for all subtype objects that are created. Also the toString() method will be run for every object. So I need those two methods. When I run the program, I get the message 3 times obviously.
What I want to know is, where is the best place to send the message from? What is the best programming practice?
For example, should I make my Exception class with a no-args constructor and then make the toString() method blank? Or should I eat the Exception (supposedly a bad practice) and use the Constructor to send the message?
Edited by: SquareBox on Apr 12, 2011 10:24 AM

Answer 1

Not sure I understand your question.
SquareBox wrote:
I wrote my own Exception class. When using it, I'm NOT sure what the best practice is.
This is a code snippet for a fire object:
public void doSomething(){
                  try{
                    fire = true;
                    throw new ControllerException("Warning: Reactor meltdown");
               catch(ControllerException e){
                    System.out.println("Warning: Reactor meltdown");
          public String toString(){
                       return "Warning: Reactor meltdown";
What class is this whose toString() method always returns "meltdown"? That makes no sense.
Why are you throwing an exception and then immediately catching it in the same try statement? I really don't get what you're trying to show here.
What I want to know is, where is the best place to send the message from? What do you mean "send the message"?
What is the best programming practice?It depends.
For example, should I make my Exception class with a no-args constructor Usually you would declare a no-arg c'tor, one that takes a String (message), one that takes a Throwable (cause), and one that takes both, all of which just invoke super(...) with the same args. Look at the code for the Exception class for an example.
and then make the toString() method blank?You usually would not override toString(), since Throwable already does that.
Or should I eat the Exception (supposedly a bad practice) and use the Constructor to send the message?No idea what you mean by "use the constructor to send the message".