throws Exception in finally blocks

Question

Is there an elegant way to handle exceptions that are thrown in finally block?

For example:

try {
  // Use the resource.
}
catch( Excep         


        

Answer 1

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 );
  }
}

Answer 2

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
    }
}

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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);
}

Answer 5

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
    }
}

Answer 6

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.