CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#exceptionnull
jsmith
jsmith

Reputation: 7278

Checking for Null in Constructor

I'm really trying to figure out the best practices for reusable code that is easily debugged. I have ran into a common practice among developers that I don't quite understand yet.

public MyConstructor(Object myObject)
{
    if (myObject == null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException("myObject is null.");
    _myObject = myObject;
}

It almost seems unnecessary to do this check. But I think it's because I don't completely understand what the benefits of doing this check are. It seems like a null reference exception would be thrown anyway? I am probably wrong, would really like to hear some thoughts on it.

Thank you.

Upvotes: 11

Views: 17766

Answers (9)

Martin
Martin

Reputation: 16433

Others have already correctly stated that the passing of a null parameter may or may not be valid depending upon the functionality of the consuming code.

Where a null parameter is undesirable it is possible, from C# 7.0, to use throw expressions which allow us to rewrite null checking code much more succinctly as the following example shows:

public MyConstructor(Object myObject)
{
    _myObject = myObject ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(myObject));
}

The above will set the value of _myObject to the parameter myObject unless that parameter is null, in which case an ArgumentNullException will be thrown.

Upvotes: 4

Tim Croydon
Tim Croydon

Reputation: 1896

You could implement a simple ThrowIfNull extension method to reduce the code you write each time. Jon Skeet covered this in his blog and the referenced SO article here.

Upvotes: 1

Jeff Sternal
Jeff Sternal

Reputation: 48593

To the compiler, null is a legitimate constructor argument.

Your class might be able to handle a null value for myObject. But if it can't - if your class will break when myObject is null - then checking in the constructor allows you to fail fast.

Upvotes: 24

dexter
dexter

Reputation: 7203

if you under 4.0 you can do the following:

 public ctor(IEnjection ninjaWeapon) 
 {
     Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>(ninjaWeapon != null);
     this.deadlyWeaponary.Add(ninjaWeapon);
 }

if you under an older version, reference the Microsoft.Contract to do the same thing.

Upvotes: 2

tia
tia

Reputation: 9698

The benefit is that the exception will be thrown at the time of object construction, so you can easily trace which part of code is the culprit. If your code requires non-null myobject value and you don't validate it in the constructor, the NullReferenceException will be thrown when you use myObject_ and you will have to trace back manually to see who sent that null value in.

Upvotes: 0

Tyler Treat
Tyler Treat

Reputation: 14998

You need to explicitly check for null because the compiler doesn't know, but also because null can be a valid argument.

Upvotes: 0

BrokenGlass
BrokenGlass

Reputation: 160922

Passing a null object is perfectly legal in many cases - for this class the implementor wants to ensure that you cannot create an instance of the class w/o passing a valid Object instance though, so there have to be no checks later on - it's a good practice to ensure this as early as possible, which would be in the constructor.

Upvotes: 3

paweloque
paweloque

Reputation: 18864

I think that it is not possible to tell generally whether checking for null is necessary or not. It rather depends on whether you can live with null valued variables or not. Null is not per se a bad state. You might have situations where it is allowed for a variable to be null and other where it is not.

Ask yourself whether it makes sense to allow null values or not and design the constructor accordingly.

Upvotes: 1

Chris Kooken
Chris Kooken

Reputation: 33900

The compilier has no idea about the value of an object, so you have to check this at runtime to ensure it doesn't get called with a null value.

It also depends on your particular solution. You don't need to throw the exception, I would only throw it if you can not have that value be null, and if it is null, that is an exceptional case.

Upvotes: 1

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