- Java Basic
- Java Object Oriented
- Java Advanced
- Java Exceptions
An exception is a problem that arises during the execution of a program. An exception can occur for many different reasons, including the following:
- A user has entered invalid data.
- A file that needs to be opened cannot be found.
- A network connection has been lost in the middle of communications, or the JVM has run out of memory.
Some of these exceptions are caused by user error, others by programmer error, and others by physical resources that have failed in some manner. To understand how exception handling works in Java, you need to understand the three categories of exceptions:
- Checked exceptions: A checked exception is an exception that is typically a user error or a problem that cannot be foreseen by the programmer. For example, if a file is to be opened, but the file cannot be found, an exception occurs. These exceptions cannot simply be ignored at the time of compilation.
- Runtime exceptions: A runtime exception is an exception that occurs that probably could have been avoided by the programmer. As opposed to checked exceptions, runtime exceptions are ignored at the time of compliation.
- Errors: These are not exceptions at all, but problems that arise beyond the control of the user or the programmer. Errors are typically ignored in your code because you can rarely do anything about an error. For example, if a stack overflow occurs, an error will arise. They are also ignored at the time of compilation.
Exception Hierarchy:
All exception classes are subtypes of the java.lang.Exception class. The exception class is a subclass of the Throwable class. Other than the exception class there is another subclass called Error which is derived from the Throwable class.
Errors are not normally trapped form the Java programs. These conditions normally happen in case of severe failures, which are not handled by the java programs. Errors are generated to indicate errors generated by the runtime environment. Example : JVM is out of Memory. Normally programs cannot recover from errors. The Exception class has two main subclasses : IOException class and RuntimeException Class.
Java’s Built-in Exceptions:
Java defines several exception classes inside the standard package java.lang. The most general of these exceptions are subclasses of the standard type RuntimeException. Since java.lang is implicitly imported into all Java programs, most exceptions derived from RuntimeException are automatically available.
Java defines several other types of exceptions that relate to its various class libraries. Following is the list of Java Unchecked RuntimeException.
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Following is the list of Java Checked Exceptions Defined in java.lang.
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Catching Exceptions:
A method catches an exception using a combination of the try and catch keywords. A try/catch block is placed around the code that might generate an exception. Code within a try/catch block is referred to as protected code, and the syntax for using try/catch looks like the following:
A catch statement involves declaring the type of exception you are trying to catch. If an exception occurs in protected code, the catch block (or blocks) that follows the try is checked. If the type of exception that occurred is listed in a catch block, the exception is passed to the catch block much as an argument is passed into a method parameter.
Output:
Multiple catch Blocks:
A try block can be followed by multiple catch blocks. The syntax for multiple catch blocks looks like the following:
The previous statements demonstrate three catch blocks, but you can have any number of them after a single try. If an exception occurs in the protected code, the exception is thrown to the first catch block in the list. If the data type of the exception thrown matches ExceptionType1, it gets caught there. If not, the exception passes down to the second catch statement. This continues until the exception either is caught or falls through all catches, in which case the current method stops execution and the exception is thrown down to the previous method on the call stack
The throws/throw Keywords:
If a method does not handle a checked exception, the method must declare it using the throwskeyword. The throws keyword appears at the end of a method's signature. You can throw an exception, either a newly instantiated one or an exception that you just caught, by using the throw keyword. Try to understand the different in throws and throw keywords.
The following method declares that it throws a RemoteException:
A method can declare that it throws more than one exception, in which case the exceptions are declared in a list separated by commas. For example, the following method declares that it throws a RemoteException and an InsufficientFundsException:
The finally Keyword:
The finally keyword is used to create a block of code that follows a try block. A finally block of code always executes, whether or not an exception has occurred. Using a finally block allows you to run any cleanup-type statements that you want to execute, no matter what happens in the protected code.
A finally block appears at the end of the catch blocks and has the following syntax:
Example:
Output:
Note the following:
- A catch clause cannot exist without a try statement.
- It is not compulsory to have finally clauses when ever a try/catch block is present.
- The try block cannot be present without either catch clause or finally clause.
- Any code cannot be present in between the try, catch, finally blocks.
Common Exceptions:
In java it is possible to define two catergories of Exceptions and Errors.
- JVM Exceptions: These are exceptions/errors that are exclusively or logically thrown by the JVM. Examples : NullPointerException, ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException, ClassCastException,
- Programmatic exceptions: These exceptions are thrown explicitly by the application or the API programmers Examples: IllegalArgumentException, IllegalStateException.