NAME

Error::Hierarchy - Support for hierarchical exception classes

VERSION

version 1.103530

SYNOPSIS

    package Error::Hierarchy::ReadOnlyAttribute;

    use warnings;
    use strict;

    use base 'Error::Hierarchy';

    __PACKAGE__->mk_accessors(qw(attribute));

    use constant default_message => '[%s] is a read only attribute';

    use constant PROPERTIES => ( 'attribute' );

# Meanwhile...

    package main;

    use Error::Hierarchy::Mixin;

    sub foo {
        if (@_) {
            Error::Hierarchy::ReadOnlyAttribute->
                throw(attribute => 'foo');
        }
    }

DESCRIPTION

This class provides support for hierarchical exception classes. It builds upon Error and is thus compatible with its try/catch mechanism. However, it records a lot more information such as the package, filename and line where the exception occurred, a complete stack trace, the hostname and a UUID.

It provides a stringification that is extensible with any properties your own exceptions might define.

METHODS

depth

Get or set the caller depth, that is the number of call stack frames that are skipped when reporting the package, filename and line the error was thrown from. When an exception object is constructed, it defaults to 0. This is useful if you want to throw an exception from the perspective of your own caller. For example:

    sub assert_foo {
        unless ($teh_foo) {
            throw SomeException(depth => 1);
        }
    }

Without the depth argument, the exception would show that it was thrown within assert_foo(). Maybe that's what you want, but with depth() you can make it appear as if the exception was thrown from the place where assert_foo() was called from.

The actual exception depth is influenced by error_depth() as well.

error_depth

Like depth(), but here the value should be defined within the exception class code itself. Therefore, you can't set the value, but subclasses can override it. Some exceptions should always be thrown from the caller's perspective (or even higher up); use error_depth() for this case. depth() by contrast is intended for the user to be set; the two are added together to get the actual depth. In this class the error_depth() defaults to 1 so the exception is at least reported from the place where it was actually thrown - a value of 0 would mean that the exception is reported as having occurred Error::Hierarchy itself, which is probably not what you want.

If you override this value in a subclass, it's probably a good idea to add the subclass' desired depth to the superclass's depth to accumulate it. For example:

    package MyException;
    use base 'Error::Hierarchy';
    sub error_depth {
        my $self = shift;
        1 + $self->SUPER::error_depth();
    }

comparable

Support for Data::Comparable.

init

Initializes a newly constructed exception object.

get_properties

Actual exception classes will subclass this class and define properties. Exception classes themselves can be subclassed. So this method returns the inherited list of all the exception class' properties.

properties_as_hash

Constructs a hash whose keys are the exception's properties - see get_properties() - and whose values are the values of each property in the exception object. The properties package, filename and line are omitted.

In list context, the hash is returned as is. In scalar context, a reference to the hash is returned.

stringify

Defines how the exception should look if the object is stringified. This class inherits from Error::Hierarchy::Base, which overloads "" to call stringify().

This class stringifies an itself by taking the message() attribute and passing it to sprintf(), along with the exception's properties.

transmute($exception, %args)

Transmutes an existing exception. It leaves the stack trace, filename, line etc. as it is and just blesses it into the class on which transmute() was called, adding the given additional arguments. This is used when catching a generic exception and turning it into a more specific one.

INSTALLATION

See perlmodinstall for information and options on installing Perl modules.

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

No bugs have been reported.

Please report any bugs or feature requests through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Error-Hierarchy.

AVAILABILITY

The latest version of this module is available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Visit http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ to find a CPAN site near you, or see http://search.cpan.org/dist/Error-Hierarchy/.

The development version lives at http://github.com/hanekomu/Error-Hierarchy and may be cloned from git://github.com/hanekomu/Error-Hierarchy. Instead of sending patches, please fork this project using the standard git and github infrastructure.

AUTHOR

Marcel Gruenauer <marcel@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2004 by Marcel Gruenauer.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.