[jira] [Updated] (CONFIGURATION-384) ConfigurationException is a checked exception; should be unchecked

["Oliver Heger (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CONFIGURATION-384?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Oliver Heger updated CONFIGURATION-384:
---------------------------------------
    Fix Version/s:     (was: 2.0)
                   2.x

> ConfigurationException is a checked exception; should be unchecked
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CONFIGURATION-384
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CONFIGURATION-384
>             Project: Commons Configuration
>          Issue Type: Wish
>    Affects Versions: 1.6
>            Reporter: mjh
>            Priority: Minor
>             Fix For: 2.x
>
>
> There's a movement in the field to simplify Java development by using unchecked Exceptions rather than checked Exceptions. Most notably this approach has been championed by Rod Johnson (J2EE without EJB, Spring Framework) and Bruce Eckels (Thinking in Java). In the last 2 years, popular libraries like Spring Framework and Hibernate 3.0 have used unchecked exceptions.
> Quote from the DeveloperWorks article listed below:
> "Some exceptions are basically secondary return codes (which generally signal violation of business rules), and some are of the "something went horribly wrong" variety (such as failure to make a database connection). Johnson advocates using checked exceptions for the first category (alternative return codes), and runtime exceptions for the latter category. In the "something went horribly wrong" category, the motivation is simply to recognize the fact that no caller is going to effectively handle this exception, so it might as well get propagated all the way up the stack with the minimum of impact on the intervening code (and minimize the chance of exception swallowing)."
> I have listed this as a bug rather than an improvement as it is common for developers to simply wrap configuration sections in a try { .. } catch ( ConfigurationException ignore ) {}, which inevitably leads to buggy code further down the line.Even if the ConfigurationException is caught, it is likely to be wrapped in a RuntimeException subclass for reporting, which is also unnecessarily obtuse.
> It makes sense for this Exception to be unchecked (RuntimeException subclass) so that developers can decide whether the exception condition is worthy of catching or should be allowed to propagate as best suits their application.



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