I am working on catching errors in my app, and I am looking into using NSError
. I am slightly confused about how to use it, and how to populate it.
Could someone provide an example on how I populate then use NSError
?
Well, what I usually do is have my methods that could error-out at runtime take a reference to a NSError
pointer. If something does indeed go wrong in that method, I can populate the NSError
reference with error data and return nil from the method.
Example:
- (id) endWorldHunger:(id)largeAmountsOfMonies error:(NSError**)error {
// begin feeding the world's children...
// it's all going well until....
if (ohNoImOutOfMonies) {
// sad, we can't solve world hunger, but we can let people know what went wrong!
// init dictionary to be used to populate error object
NSMutableDictionary* details = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
[details setValue:@"ran out of money" forKey:NSLocalizedDescriptionKey];
// populate the error object with the details
*error = [NSError errorWithDomain:@"world" code:200 userInfo:details];
// we couldn't feed the world's children...return nil..sniffle...sniffle
return nil;
}
// wohoo! We fed the world's children. The world is now in lots of debt. But who cares?
return YES;
}
We can then use the method like this. Don't even bother to inspect the error object unless the method returns nil:
// initialize NSError object
NSError* error = nil;
// try to feed the world
id yayOrNay = [self endWorldHunger:smallAmountsOfMonies error:&error];
if (!yayOrNay) {
// inspect error
NSLog(@"%@", [error localizedDescription]);
}
// otherwise the world has been fed. Wow, your code must rock.
We were able to access the error's localizedDescription
because we set a value for NSLocalizedDescriptionKey
.
The best place for more information is Apple's documentation. It really is good.
There is also a nice, simple tutorial on Cocoa Is My Girlfriend.