CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-2.7
JasonTS
JasonTS

Reputation: 2589

How to repeat something upon exception in python?

What is the most elegant way to repeat something after it caused an exception in python?

I have something like this [pseudo code as an example]:

try:
  do_some_database_stuff()
except DatabaseTimeoutException:
  reconnect_to_database()
  do_some_database_stuff() # just do it again

But imagine if I don't have a nice function but a lot of code instead. Duplicate code is not very nice.

So I think this is slightly better:

while True:
  try:
    do_some_database_stuff()
    break
  except DatabaseTimeoutException:
    reconnect_to_database()

That's good enough if the exception really fixes the problem. If not I need a counter to prevent an indefinite loop:

i = 0
while i < 5:
  try:
    do_some_database_stuff()
    break
  except DatabaseTimeoutException:
    reconnect_to_database()
    i += 1

But then I don't really know if it worked so it's also:

while i <= 5:
  try:
    do_some_database_stuff()
    break
  except DatabaseTimeoutException:
    if i != 5:
     reconnect_to_database()
    else:
      raise DatabaseTimeoutException
    i += 1

As you can see it starts to get very messy.

What is the most elegant way of expressing this logic?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 574

Answers (2)

Dunes
Dunes

Reputation: 40853

I'm personally not a fan of the for-else construct. I don't think it's intutitive. First time I read it I thought it meant "do for loop (...), if iterable was empty then ...".

You should place your code inside a function. If do_some_database_stuff() completes successfully then you can use the return statement to return early from the function.

eg.

def try_to_do_some_database_stuff():
    for i in range(num_times):
        try:
            return do_some_database_stuff()
        except DatabaseTimeoutException:
            reconnect_to_database()
    raise DatabaseTimeoutException

If you find yourself using this construct quite a lot then you can make it more generic.

def try_to_do(func, catch, times=2, on_exception=None):
    for i in range(times):
        try:
            return func()
        except catch:
            if on_exception:
                on_exception()
    raise catch

try_to_do(do_some_database_stuff, catch=DatabaseTimeoutException, times=5, 
    on_exception=reconnect_to_database)

You can use functools.partial if you need to pass arguments to your functions.

Upvotes: 1

John Zwinck
John Zwinck

Reputation: 249592

You can use a "for-else" loop:

for ii in range(5):
    try:
        do_some_database_stuff()
        break
    except DatabaseTimeoutException:
        reconnect_to_database()
else:
    raise DatabaseTimeoutException

Or, without:

for ii in range(5):
    try:
        do_some_database_stuff()
        break
    except DatabaseTimeoutException:
        if ii == 4:
            raise
        reconnect_to_database()

Upvotes: 6

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