Skip to content

Catching CancellationException in coroutines #38

Open
@LeafyLappa

Description

@LeafyLappa

Description

I believe the implementation of error handling in coroutines could be improved by not catching all possible exceptions.

For example, in CharacterDetailViewModel there's this function:

    /**
     * Fetch selected character detail info.
     *
     * @param characterId Character identifier.
     */
    fun loadCharacterDetail(characterId: Long) {
        _state.postValue(CharacterDetailViewState.Loading)
        viewModelScope.launch {
            try {
                val result = marvelRepository.getCharacter(characterId)
                _data.postValue(characterDetailMapper.map(result))

                characterFavoriteRepository.getCharacterFavorite(characterId)?.let {
                    _state.postValue(CharacterDetailViewState.AlreadyAddedToFavorite)
                } ?: run {
                    _state.postValue(CharacterDetailViewState.AddToFavorite)
                }
            } catch (e: Exception) {
                _state.postValue(CharacterDetailViewState.Error)
            }
        }
    }

Here you could theoretically break the normal coroutine cancellation flow. If the coroutine here is cancelled for any reason then the app might show an error even when there's none.

By the way I've seen this kind of problem way too many times in actual production code. What's worse is that people won't even know how to properly fix it.

I generally use the solution I found here: https://betterprogramming.pub/the-silent-killer-thats-crashing-your-coroutines-9171d1e8f79b I find it very simple and nice as it could be used with runCatching...

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions