JavaScript: Handling Exceptions

the try... catch statement - exception handler

The try...catch statement marks a block of statements to try, and specifies one or more responses should an exception be thrown. If an exception is thrown, the try...catch statement catches it.

The try...catch statement consists of a try block, which contains one or more statements, and zero or more catch blocks, containing statements that specify what to do if an exception is thrown in the try block. That is, you want the try block to succeed, and if it does not succeed, you want control to pass to the catch block. If any statement within the try block (or in a function called from within the try block) throws an exception, control immediately shifts to the catch block. If no exception is thrown in the try block succeed, the catch block is skipped. The finally block executes after the try and catch blocks execute but before the statements following the try...catch statement.

The following example uses a try...catch statement. The example calls a function that retrieves a month name from an array based on the value passed to the function. If the value does not correspond to a month number (1-12), an exception is thrown with the value InvalidMonthNo and the statements in the catch block set the monthName variable to unknown.

function getMonthName (mo) {
    mo=mo-1; // Adjust month number for array index (1=Jan, 12=Dec)
    var months=new Array("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul",
          "Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec");
    if (months[mo] != null) {
       return months[mo]
    } else {
       throw “InvalidMonthNo”
    }
}

try {
// statements to try
    monthName=getMonthName(myMonth) // function could throw exception
}
catch (e) {
    monthName=”unknown”
    logMyErrors(e) // pass exception object to error handler
}

The catch Block

You can use a single catch block to handle all exceptions that may be generated in the try block, or you can use separate catch blocks each of which handles a particular type of exception.

Single catch Block
Use a single try...catch statement’s catch block (recovery block) to execute error-handling code for any exceptions thrown in the try block.

A single catch block has the following syntax:

catch (catchID) {
  statements
}

The catch block specifies an identifier (catchID in the preceding syntax) that holds the value specified by the throw statement; you can use this identifier to get information about the exception that was thrown. JavaScript creates this identifier when the catch block is entered; the identifier lasts only for the duration of the catch block; after the catch block finishes executing, the identifier is no longer available.

For example, the following code throws an exception. When the exception occurs, control transfers to the catch block.

try {
   throw "myException" // generates an exception
}
catch (e) {
// statements to handle any exceptions
   logMyErrors(e) // pass exception object to error handler
}

Core JavaScript Guide: Exception Handling Statements: try… catch statement;