FxCop backlog themes: Exceptions

FxCop backlog themes: Disposition and finalization

I may have joined the wrong side — Wed, 16 May 2007 20:07:25 GMT

I skipped ahead a while back with my post on the exceptions theme , and it's time to get back on

re: FxCop backlog themes: Exceptions

calinoiu — Sun, 06 May 2007 11:48:27 GMT

"value" is actually the name of the argument in the setter method (take a look in Reflector to see for yourself), and not all languages support the property syntax, so it does make more sense to use the argument name rather than the property name in the ArgumentException. When callers have to resort to using "set_YourProperty(value)", an argument exception for "YourProperty" isn't necessarily going to make a whole lot of sense. Conversely, for those who can use the "YourProperty = value" syntax, the name "value" has implicit meaning and isn't bound to create any problems in understanding the meaning of the exception message.

As for what to throw for empty strings, the current guideline from Microsoft seems to be to throw a vanilla ArgumentException (see blogs.msdn.com/.../faq-what-exception-should-i-throw-instead-of-the-reserved-exceptions-found-by-donotraisereservedexceptiontypes.aspx). However, a lot of folks (including me) at FinRad aren't always very comfortable with that, so we're using an ArgumentEmptyException that inherits directly from ArgumentException and is meant to be thrown for both string and collection arguments that are inappropriately empty.

re: FxCop backlog themes: Exceptions

Lothan — Sun, 06 May 2007 10:33:36 GMT

One of the exception rules that has always puzzled me is CA2208 in regards to property getters and setters and exceptions. When testing for a null or empty string in a property setter, I throw ArgumentNullException("Test", "...") where Test is the name of the property, but FxCop wants me to change this to ArgumentNullException("value"). ArgumentNullException isn't my first choice, but I can't find a more appropriate exception to use in this case.