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How to avoid throw clause in finally block

I am using SonarQube for code quality. I got one issue related to exception handling, which says remove throw clause from finally block.
} catch(Exception e) {
throw new MyException("request failed : ", e);
} finally {
try {
httpClient.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new MyException("failed to close server conn: ", e);
}
}
Based on my understanding above code looks good. If I remove throw clause and suppress exception in finally then caller of this method will not be able to know server's status. I am not sure how we can achieve same functionality without having throw clause.

Your best shot is to use the Automatic Resource Management feature of Java, available since Java 7. If that is for some reason not available to you, then the next best thing is to replicate what that syntactic sugar expands into:
public static void runWithoutMasking() throws MyException {
AutoClose autoClose = new AutoClose();
MyException myException = null;
try {
autoClose.work();
} catch (MyException e) {
myException = e;
throw e;
} finally {
if (myException != null) {
try {
autoClose.close();
} catch (Throwable t) {
myException.addSuppressed(t);
}
} else {
autoClose.close();
}
}
}
Things to note:
your code swallows the original exception from the try block in case closing the resource fails. The original exception is surely more important for diagnostic;
in the ARM idiom above, closing the resource is done differently depending on whether there already was an exception in the try-block. If try completed normally, then the resource is closed outside any try-catch block, naturally propagating any exception.

Generally, methods in the finally block are 'cleanup' codes (Closing the Connection, etc) which the user does not necessarily need to know.
What I do for these exceptions is to absorb the exception, but log the details.
finally{
try{
connection.close();
}catch(SQLException e){
// do nothing and just log the error
LOG.error("Something happened while closing connection. Cause: " + e.getMessage());
}
}

You're getting a warning because this code could potentially throw an exception while dealing with a thrown exception. You can use the try with resource syntax to close the resource automatically. Read more here.
In the case that the "request failed : " exception is thrown and you fail to close the httpclient, the second exception is the one that would bubble up.

I am not sure how we can achieve same functionality without having
throw clause.
You could nest the two try blocks differently to achieve the same result:
HttpClient httpClient = null; // initialize
try {
try {
// do something with httpClient
} catch(Exception e) {
throw new MyException("request failed : ", e);
} finally {
httpClient.close();
}
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new MyException("failed to close server conn: ", e);
}

How to best detect certain exceptions?

First of all: StackOverflow tells me that the question is subjective, which it is not.
I have this code:
try {
// Some I/O code that should work fine, but might go weird
// when the programmer fails or other stuff happens...
// It will also throw exceptions that are completely fine,
// such as when the socket is closed and we try to read, etc.
} catch (Exception ex) {
String msg = ex.getMessage();
if (msg != null) {
msg = msg.toLowerCase();
}
if (msg == null || (!msg.equals("pipe closed") &&
!msg.equals("end of stream reached") &&
!msg.equals("stream closed") &&
!msg.equals("connection reset") &&
!msg.equals("socket closed"))) {
// only handle (log etc) exceptions that we did not expect
onUnusualException(ex);
}
throw ex;
}
As you can see my procedure of checking for certain exceptions works, but is VERY dirty. I'm afraid that some VMs might use other strings for the exceptions that should NOT cause the specified method to be called.
What are different solutions I could use for this problem? If I use IOException to check for non-unusual (lol) exceptions, I will not catch any unusual exceptions that derive from it or use it.

For an exception that extends IOException (or another exception), put it in a separate catch statement before the Exception that it extends.
try {
// this might throw exceptions
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) { // this extends IOException
// code
} catch (IOException e) {
// more code
}
In the above example, the code in the first statement will be executed if the exception is an instance of FileNotFoundException. The second one will be executed only if it is an IOException that is not a FileNotFoundException. Using this approach, you can deal with multiple exception types that extend each other.
You can also catch multiple types of exceptions in the same catch statement.
try {
// even more code
} catch (IOException|ArithmeticException e) {
// this will run if an IOException or ArithmeticException is thrown
}
Hope this helps.

Can't determine what is throwing a NullPointer exception

I have a method that looks like this:
try {
doStuff();
} catch (Exception ex) {
logger.error(ex);
}
(I don't really use method names like doStuff - this is just to make things easy)
In doStuff I do a variety of things, among them is call a data access method (so, another method within doStuff) that ends with the following:
} catch (SQLException ex) {
logger.error(ex);
} finally {
try {
connection.close();
proc.close();
results.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.error(e);
} //<--Exception thrown here. HUH?
}
return stuff;
When stepping through this code I get to the second to last curly brace (marked with a comment) and then jump up to the catch in the first code block with a NullPointer exception. The results.close() is what is being run right before it (results is not null). My IDE (NetBeans) doesn't provide a stack trace (it shows the stack trace is null) or any other information other than the name of the exception (from what I can tell).
This code was running fine previously. In fact while it was running, I changed the stored procedure that the data access method (where I'm getting this exception) was calling, and then this error started to occur (without the application having been stopped at all). I've since tried rebuilding and restarting but to no avail. I could change the sproc back but I really want to find out what this error is from since it makes no sense that the sproc would even be a part of this considering where in the code the exception is occurring.

your doStuff() method is throwing something other than a SQLException and it is not being caught. add a catch(Exception e) block and log that exception and see what happens.
this code sample exhibits the same behaviour you are describing:
public class TryCatchTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
System.out.println("foo");
throw new NullPointerException();
} finally {
try {
System.out.println("bar");
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
} // exception thrown here
}
}

Close the resources in the reverse order in which they were obtained:
try
{
results.close();
proc.close();
connection.close();
}
catch (Exception e)
{
logger.error(e);
} //<--Exception thrown here. HUH?
I'd also recommend methods like these:
public class DatabaseUtils
{
// similar for ResultSet and Statement
public static void close(Connection c)
{
try
{
if (c != null)
{
c.close();
}
}
catch (SQLException e)
{
// log or print.
}
}
}

It could well be that logger is null.
Hard-to-pinpoint exceptions are often thrown in the exception handler itself.

NullPointerException can not be thrown in a line without a statement.
Check that the class file you are executing is of the same version as the source you view (I have had similar issues when an incorrectly configured classpath contained a class twice and the older version was found first in the classpath, or a recompiled class files for not correctly copied to the web container I used for testing).
Edit: As emh points out, it could also be that exception occured prior to entering the finally block.

I'm 99% sure this is happening in the JDBC driver. For starters, your close statements are backwards. You should close the resultset, the statement and the connection, in that order.
If you are running in an application server which is managing the transactions, then the attempt to commit the transaction may trigger the exception inside the JDBC driver.
It could also be something about how result sets are generated in the stored proceedure, such as accessing one, then accessing another, and then referring back to the first one.

As I said in a comment, never catch an exception that you don't want to deal with. In your code, assuming that it is complete, you are not doing anything interesting with the exception, and it is causing you confusion on where and why the exception is happening. If you really want to do more than log or printStackTrace(), like wrapping it with a domain-specific exception (like your.package.DataAccessException or something), then great.
Do something more like this:
ResultSet results = null;
CallableStatement proc = null;
Connection connection = null;
try {
connection = >
proc = connection.createCallableStatement(..);
results = proc.execute(..);
>
} finally {
try {
if ( results != null ) {
results.close();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.error(e);
}
try {
if ( proc != null ) {
proc.close();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.error(e);
}
try {
if ( connection != null ) {
connection.close();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.error(e);
}
}
And then in the caller:
try {
doStuff();
} catch ( SQLException e ) {
throw new your.package.DataAccessException(e);
// or just let the SQLException propagate upward
} catch ( Exception e ) {
throw new your.package.AppException("omg, crazy pills!", e);
// or, once again, just let the exception
// propagate and don't catch anything
}
So, take-away:
don't log exception where they happen, just pass them on, nested in another exception. You don't want your process to not know whether or not the SQL action succeeded or not. You would rather stop and do something else.
Nest exceptions until the get to the end of the line, that way, you always have the complete trace in the place that you wanted to deal with the exception, not in five places scattered throughout your server log.
Nest exceptions (yes, I said that twice!) so that you don't care where the JVM actually throws the exception from, you have the next exception to follow, telling you it was actually a callable statement, or improper closing of your resources, etc.
Don't nest and throw exceptions from errors caught in your finally code, that will interfere with the original exception and that will be more interesting than the failure to close and statement that didn't get opened in the first place.
Set variables to null before you use them, and then check for null before close()ing them.
Catch each problem in the finally block individually, as you might not be able to close your ResultSet (because some execution error caused it not to open in the first place), but you should still try to close the CallableStatement and Connection, as it is probably unaffected and will still cause you to leak resources.
Hope that helps.

throws Exception in finally blocks

Is there an elegant way to handle exceptions that are thrown in finally block?
For example:
try {
// Use the resource.
}
catch( Exception ex ) {
// Problem with the resource.
}
finally {
try{
resource.close();
}
catch( Exception ex ) {
// Could not close the resource?
}
}
How do you avoid the try/catch in the finally block?

I usually do it like this:
try {
// Use the resource.
} catch( Exception ex ) {
// Problem with the resource.
} finally {
// Put away the resource.
closeQuietly( resource );
}
Elsewhere:
protected void closeQuietly( Resource resource ) {
try {
if (resource != null) {
resource.close();
}
} catch( Exception ex ) {
log( "Exception during Resource.close()", ex );
}
}

I typically use one of the closeQuietly methods in org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils:
public static void closeQuietly(OutputStream output) {
try {
if (output != null) {
output.close();
}
} catch (IOException ioe) {
// ignore
}
}

If you're using Java 7, and resource implements AutoClosable, you can do this (using InputStream as an example):
try (InputStream resource = getInputStream()) {
// Use the resource.
}
catch( Exception ex ) {
// Problem with the resource.
}

Arguably a bit over the top, but maybe useful if you're letting exceptions bubble up and you can't log anything from within your method (e.g. because it's a library and you'd rather let the calling code handle exceptions and logging):
Resource resource = null;
boolean isSuccess = false;
try {
resource = Resource.create();
resource.use();
// Following line will only run if nothing above threw an exception.
isSuccess = true;
} finally {
if (resource != null) {
if (isSuccess) {
// let close throw the exception so it isn't swallowed.
resource.close();
} else {
try {
resource.close();
} catch (ResourceException ignore) {
// Just swallow this one because you don't want it
// to replace the one that came first (thrown above).
}
}
}
}
UPDATE: I looked into this a bit more and found a great blog post from someone who has clearly thought about this more than me: http://illegalargumentexception.blogspot.com/2008/10/java-how-not-to-make-mess-of-stream.html He goes one step further and combines the two exceptions into one, which I could see being useful in some cases.

As of Java 7 you no longer need to explicitly close resources in a finally block instead you can use try-with-resources syntax. The try-with-resources statement is a try statement that declares one or more resources. A resource is an object that must be closed after the program is finished with it. The try-with-resources statement ensures that each resource is closed at the end of the statement. Any object that implements java.lang.AutoCloseable, which includes all objects which implement java.io.Closeable, can be used as a resource.
Assume the following code:
try( Connection con = null;
Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
Result rs= stmt.executeQuery(QUERY);)
{
count = rs.getInt(1);
}
If any exception happens the close method will be called on each of these three resources in opposite order in which they were created. It means the close method would be called first for ResultSetm then the Statement and at the end for the Connection object.
It's also important to know that any exceptions that occur when the close methods is automatically called are suppressed. These suppressed exceptions can be retrieved by getsuppressed() method defined in the Throwable class.
Source: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/tryResourceClose.html

Ignoring exceptions which occur in a 'finally' block is generally a bad idea unless one knows what those exceptions will be and what conditions they will represent. In the normal try/finally usage pattern, the try block places things into a state the outside code won't be expecting, and the finally block restores those things' state to what the outside code expects. Outside code which catches an exception will generally expect that, despite the exception, everything has been restored to a normal state. For example, suppose some code starts a transaction and then tries to add two records; the "finally" block performs a "rollback if not committed" operation. A caller might be prepared for an exception to occur during the execution of the second "add" operation, and may expect that if it catches such an exception, the database will be in the state it was before either operation was attempted. If, however, a second exception occurs during the rollback, bad things could happen if the caller makes any assumptions about the database state. The rollback failure represents a major crisis--one which should not be caught by code expecting a mere "Failed to add record" exception.
My personal inclination would be to have a finally method catch exceptions that occur and wrap them in a "CleanupFailedException", recognizing that such failure represents a major problem and such an exception should not be caught lightly.

One solution, if the two Exceptions are two different classes
try {
...
}
catch(package1.Exception err)
{
...
}
catch(package2.Exception err)
{
...
}
finally
{
}
But sometimes you cannot avoid this second try-catch. e.g. for closing a stream
InputStream in=null;
try
{
in= new FileInputStream("File.txt");
(..)// do something that might throw an exception during the analysis of the file, e.g. a SQL error
}
catch(SQLException err)
{
//handle exception
}
finally
{
//at the end, we close the file
if(in!=null) try { in.close();} catch(IOException err) { /* ignore */ }
}

Why do you want to avoid the additional block? Since the finally block contains "normal" operations which may throw an exception AND you want the finally block to run completely you HAVE to catch exceptions.
If you don't expect the finally block to throw an exception and you don't know how to handle the exception anyway (you would just dump stack trace) let the exception bubble up the call stack (remove the try-catch from the finally block).
If you want to reduce typing you could implement a "global" outer try-catch block, which will catch all exceptions thrown in finally blocks:
try {
try {
...
} catch (Exception ex) {
...
} finally {
...
}
try {
...
} catch (Exception ex) {
...
} finally {
...
}
try {
...
} catch (Exception ex) {
...
} finally {
...
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
...
}

After lots of consideration, I find the following code best:
MyResource resource = null;
try {
resource = new MyResource();
resource.doSomethingFancy();
resource.close();
resource = null;
} finally {
closeQuietly(resource)
}
void closeQuietly(MyResource a) {
if (a!=null)
try {
a.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
//ignore
}
}
That code guarantees following:
The resource is freed when the code finished
Exceptions thrown when closing the resource are not consumed without processing them.
The code does not try to close the resource twice, no unnecessary exception will be created.

If you can you should test to avoid the error condition to begin with.
try{...}
catch(NullArgumentException nae){...}
finally
{
//or if resource had some useful function that tells you its open use that
if (resource != null)
{
resource.Close();
resource = null;//just to be explicit about it was closed
}
}
Also you should probably only be catching exceptions that you can recover from, if you can't recover then let it propagate to the top level of your program. If you can't test for an error condition that you will have to surround your code with a try catch block like you already have done (although I would recommend still catching specific, expected errors).

You could refactor this into another method ...
public void RealDoSuff()
{
try
{ DoStuff(); }
catch
{ // resource.close failed or something really weird is going on
// like an OutOfMemoryException
}
}
private void DoStuff()
{
try
{}
catch
{
}
finally
{
if (resource != null)
{
resource.close();
}
}
}

I usually do this:
MyResource r = null;
try {
// use resource
} finally {
if( r != null ) try {
r.close();
} catch( ThatSpecificExceptionOnClose teoc ){}
}
Rationale: If I'm done with the resource and the only problem I have is closing it, there is not much I can do about it. It doesn't make sense either to kill the whole thread if I'm done with the resource anyway.
This is one of the cases when at least for me, it is safe to ignore that checked exception.
To this day I haven't had any problem using this idiom.

try {
final Resource resource = acquire();
try {
use(resource);
} finally {
resource.release();
}
} catch (ResourceException exx) {
... sensible code ...
}
Job done. No null tests. Single catch, include acquire and release exceptions. Of course you can use the Execute Around idiom and only have to write it once for each resource type.

Changing Resource from best answer to Closeable
Streams implements Closeable Thus you can reuse the method for all streams
protected void closeQuietly(Closeable resource) {
if (resource == null)
return;
try {
resource.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
//log the exception
}
}

I encountered a situation similar where I couldn't use try with resources but I also wanted to handle the exception coming from the close, not just log and ignore it like closeQuietly mechanism do. in my case I'm not actually dealing with an output stream, so the failure on close is of more interest than a simple stream.
IOException ioException = null;
try {
outputStream.write("Something");
outputStream.flush();
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new ExportException("Unable to write to response stream", e);
}
finally {
try {
outputStream.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
ioException = e;
}
}
if (ioException != null) {
throw new ExportException("Unable to close outputstream", ioException);
}

Closing a Java FileInputStream

Alright, I have been doing the following (variable names have been changed):
FileInputStream fis = null;
try
{
fis = new FileInputStream(file);
... process ...
}
catch (IOException e)
{
... handle error ...
}
finally
{
if (fis != null)
fis.close();
}
Recently, I started using FindBugs, which suggests that I am not properly closing streams. I decide to see if there's anything that can be done with a finally{} block, and then I see, oh yeah, close() can throw IOException. What are people supposed to do here? The Java libraries throw too many checked exceptions.

For Java 7 and above try-with-resources should be used:
try (InputStream in = new FileInputStream(file)) {
// TODO: work
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO: handle error
}
If you're stuck on Java 6 or below...
This pattern avoids mucking around with null:
try {
InputStream in = new FileInputStream(file);
try {
// TODO: work
} finally {
in.close();
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO: error handling
}
For a more detail on how to effectively deal with close, read this blog post: Java: how not to make a mess of stream handling. It has more sample code, more depth and covers the pitfalls of wrapping close in a catch block.

Something like the following should do it, up to you whether you throw or swallow the IOException on attempting to close the stream.
FileInputStream fis = null;
try
{
fis = new FileInputStream(file);
... process ...
}
catch (IOException e)
{
... blah blah blah ...
}
finally
{
try
{
if (fis != null)
fis.close();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
}
}

You could use the try-with-resources feature added JDK7. It was created precisely to deal with this kind of things
static String readFirstLineFromFile(String path) throws IOException {
try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path))) {
return br.readLine();
}
}
The documenation says:
The try-with-resources statement ensures that each resource is closed
at the end of the statement.

You could also use a simple static Helper Method:
public static void closeQuietly(InputStream s) {
if (null == s) {
return;
}
try {
s.close();
} catch (IOException ioe) {
//ignore exception
}
}
and use this from your finally block.

Nothing much to add, except for a very minor stylistic suggestion. The canonical example of self documenting code applies in this case - give a descriptive variable name to the ignored IOException that you must catch on close().
So squiddle's answer becomes:
public static void closeQuietly(InputStream s) {
try {
s.close();
} catch (IOException ignored) {
}
}

In most cases, I find it is just better not to catch the IO exceptions, and simply use try-finally:
final InputStream is = ... // (assuming some construction that can't return null)
try {
// process is
...
} finally {
is.close();
}
Except for FileNotFoundException, you generally can't "work around" an IOException. The only thing left to do is report an error, and you will typically handle that further up the call stack, so I find it better to propagate the exception.
Since IOException is a checked exception, you will have to declare that this code (and any of its clients) throws IOException. That might be too noisy, or you might not want to reveal the implementation detail of using IO. In that case, you can wrap the entire block with an exception handler that wraps the IOException in a RuntimeException or an abstract exception type.
Detail: I am aware that the above code swallows any exception from the try block when the close operation in the finally block produces an IOException. I don't think that is a big problem: generally, the exception from the try block will be the same IOException that causes the close to fail (i.e. it is quite rare for IO to work fine and then fail at the point of closing). If this is a concern, it might be worth the trouble to "silence" the close.

The following solution correctly throws an exception if close fails without hiding a possible exception before the close.
try {
InputStream in = new FileInputStream(file);
try {
// work
in.close();
} finally {
Closeables.closeQuietly(in);
}
} catch(IOException exc) {
// kernel panic
}
This works because calling close a second time has no effect.
This relies on guava Closeables, but one can write its own closeQuietly method if preferred, as shown by squiddle (see also serg10).
Reporting a close error, in the general case, is important because close might write some final bytes to the stream, e.g. because of buffering. Hence, your user wants to know if it failed, or you probably want to act somehow. Granted, this might not be true in the specific case of a FileInputStream, I don't know (but for reasons already mentioned I think it is better to report a close error if it occurs anyway).
The above code is a bit difficult to grasp because of the structure of the embedded try blocks. It might be considered clearer with two methods, one that throws an IOException and one that catches it. At least that is what I would opt for.
private void work() throws IOException {
InputStream in = new FileInputStream(file);
try {
// work
in.close();
} finally {
Closeables.closeQuietly(in);
}
}
public void workAndDealWithException() {
try {
work();
} catch(IOException exc) {
// kernel panic
}
}
Based on http://illegalargumentexception.blogspot.com/2008/10/java-how-not-to-make-mess-of-stream.html (referenced by McDowell).

Hopefully we will get closures in Java some day, and then we will lose lots of the verbosity.
So instead there will be a helper method somwhere in javaIO that you can import, it will probably takes a "Closable" interface and also a block. Inside that helper method the try {closable.close() } catch (IOException ex){ //blah} is defined once and for all, and then you will be able to write
Inputstream s = ....;
withClosable(s) {
//your code here
}

Are you concerned primarily with getting a clean report from FindBugs or with having code that works? These are not necessarily the same thing. Your original code is fine (although I would get rid of the redundant if (fis != null) check since an OutOfMemoryException would have been thrown otherwise). FileInputStream has a finalizer method which will close the stream for you in the unlikely event that you actually receive an IOException in your processing. It's simply not worth the bother of making your code more sophisticated to avoid the extremely unlikely scenario of
you get an IOException and
this happens so often that you start to run into finalizer backlog issues.
Edit: if you are getting so many IOExceptions that you are running into problems with the finalizer queue then you have far far bigger fish to fry! This is about getting a sense of perspective.