Exception handling is a crucial aspect of robust .NET applications. It allows your application to gracefully handle errors that occur during runtime, preventing crashes and providing informative error messages to the user.
Why Handle Exceptions?
Without exception handling, an unhandled exception will typically terminate your application. Exception handling provides a structured way to:
- Catch and recover from errors.
- Log errors for debugging.
- Provide user-friendly error messages.
- Maintain application stability.
Key Concepts
Here are some fundamental concepts related to exception handling:
- Throwing Exceptions: You use the `throw` keyword to raise an exception when an error condition is detected.
- Catching Exceptions: You use `try-catch` blocks to capture and handle exceptions that are thrown.
- Exception Types: .NET provides various built-in exception types (e.g., `ArgumentException`, `NullReferenceException`, `DivideByZeroException`).
- Exception Hierarchy: Exceptions are organized in a hierarchy, allowing you to catch specific types or handle more general exceptions.
Example
try
{
// Code that might throw an exception
int result = 10 / 0;
}
catch (DivideByZeroException ex)
{
// Handle the DivideByZeroException
Console.WriteLine("Error: Division by zero.");
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Handle other exceptions
Console.WriteLine("An unexpected error occurred.");
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}