python: How do I know what type of exception occurred?

Question

I have a function called by the main program:

try:
    someFunction()
except:
    print \"exception happened!\"

but in the middle of the ex

Answer 1

Just refrain from catching the exception and the traceback that Python prints will tell you what exception occurred.

Answer 2

You usually should not catch all possible exceptions with try: ... except as this is overly broad. Just catch those that are expected to happen for whatever reason. If you really must, for example if you want to find out more about some problem while debugging, you should do

try:
    ...
except Exception as ex:
    print ex # do whatever you want for debugging.
    raise    # re-raise exception.

Answer 3

The other answers all point out that you should not catch generic exceptions, but no one seems to want to tell you why, which is essential to understanding when you can break the "rule". Here is an explanation. Basically, it's so that you don't hide:

• the fact that an error occurred
• the specifics of the error that occurred (error hiding antipattern)

So as long as you take care to do none of those things, it's OK to catch the generic exception. For instance, you could provide information about the exception to the user another way, like:

• Present exceptions as dialogs in a GUI
• Transfer exceptions from a worker thread or process to the controlling thread or process in a multithreading or multiprocessing application

So how to catch the generic exception? There are several ways. If you just want the exception object, do it like this:

try:
    someFunction()
except Exception as ex:
    template = "An exception of type {0} occurred. Arguments:\n{1!r}"
    message = template.format(type(ex).__name__, ex.args)
    print message

Make sure message is brought to the attention of the user in a hard-to-miss way! Printing it, as shown above, may not be enough if the message is buried in lots of other messages. Failing to get the users attention is tantamount to swallowing all exceptions, and if there's one impression you should have come away with after reading the answers on this page, it's that this is not a good thing. Ending the except block with a raise statement will remedy the problem by transparently reraising the exception that was caught.

The difference between the above and using just except: without any argument is twofold:

• A bare except: doesn't give you the exception object to inspect
• The exceptions SystemExit, KeyboardInterrupt and GeneratorExit aren't caught by the above code, which is generally what you want. See the exception hierarchy.

If you also want the same stacktrace you get if you do not catch the exception, you can get that like this (still inside the except clause):

import traceback
print traceback.format_exc()

If you use the logging module, you can print the exception to the log (along with a message) like this:

import logging
log = logging.getLogger()
log.exception("Message for you, sir!")

If you want to dig deeper and examine the stack, look at variables etc., use the post_mortem function of the pdb module inside the except block:

import pdb
pdb.post_mortem()

I've found this last method to be invaluable when hunting down bugs.

Answer 4

try: someFunction() except Exception, exc:

#this is how you get the type
excType = exc.__class__.__name__

#here we are printing out information about the Exception
print 'exception type', excType
print 'exception msg', str(exc)

#It's easy to reraise an exception with more information added to it
msg = 'there was a problem with someFunction'
raise Exception(msg + 'because of %s: %s' % (excType, exc))

Answer 5

Use the below for both Exception type and Exception text

import sys
print(str(sys.exc_info()[0]).split(' ')[1].strip('>').strip("'")+"-"+(str(sys.exc_info()[1])))

if you want only exception type: Use -->

import sys
print(str(sys.exc_info()[0]).split(' ')[1].strip('>').strip("'"))

Thanks Rajeshwar

Answer 6

Here's how I'm handling my exceptions. The idea is to do try solving the issue if that's easy, and later add a more desirable solution if possible. Don't solve the issue in the code that generates the exception, or that code loses track of the original algorithm, which should be written to-the-point. However, pass what data is needed to solve the issue, and return a lambda just in case you can't solve the problem outside of the code that generates it.

path = 'app.p'

def load():
    if os.path.exists(path):
        try:
            with open(path, 'rb') as file:
                data = file.read()
                inst = pickle.load(data)
        except Exception as e:
            inst = solve(e, 'load app data', easy=lambda: App(), path=path)()
    else:
        inst = App()
    inst.loadWidgets()

# e.g. A solver could search for app data if desc='load app data'
def solve(e, during, easy, **kwargs):
    class_name = e.__class__.__name__
    print(class_name + ': ' + str(e))
    print('\t during: ' + during)
    return easy

For now, since I don't want to think tangentially to my app's purpose, I haven't added any complicated solutions. But in the future, when I know more about possible solutions (since the app is designed more), I could add in a dictionary of solutions indexed by during.

In the example shown, one solution might be to look for app data stored somewhere else, say if the 'app.p' file got deleted by mistake.

For now, since writing the exception handler is not a smart idea (we don't know the best ways to solve it yet, because the app design will evolve), we simply return the easy fix which is to act like we're running the app for the first time (in this case).