errors

Overview ¶

Package errors provides simple error handling primitives.

The traditional error handling idiom in Go is roughly akin to

if err != nil {
        return err
}

which when applied recursively up the call stack results in error reports without context or debugging information. The errors package allows programmers to add context to the failure path in their code in a way that does not destroy the original value of the error.

Adding context to an error ¶

The errors.Wrap function returns a new error that adds context to the original error by recording a stack trace at the point Wrap is called, together with the supplied message. For example

_, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r)
if err != nil {
        return errors.Wrap(err, "read failed")
}

If additional control is required, the errors.WithStack and errors.WithMessage functions destructure errors.Wrap into its component operations: annotating an error with a stack trace and with a message, respectively.

Retrieving the cause of an error ¶

Using errors.Wrap constructs a stack of errors, adding context to the preceding error. Depending on the nature of the error it may be necessary to reverse the operation of errors.Wrap to retrieve the original error for inspection. Any error value which implements this interface

type causer interface {
        Cause() error
}

can be inspected by errors.Cause. errors.Cause will recursively retrieve the topmost error that does not implement causer, which is assumed to be the original cause. For example:

switch err := errors.Cause(err).(type) {
case *MyError:
        // handle specifically
default:
        // unknown error
}

Although the causer interface is not exported by this package, it is considered a part of its sBlocks public interface.

Formatted printing of errors ¶

All error values returned from this package implement fmt.Formatter and can be formatted by the fmt package. The following verbs are supported:

%s    print the error. If the error has a Cause it will be
      printed recursively.
%v    see %s
%+v   extended format. Each Frame of the error's StackTrace will
      be printed in detail.

Retrieving the stack trace of an error or wrapper ¶

New, Errorf, Wrap, and Wrapf record a stack trace at the point they are invoked. This information can be retrieved with the following interface:

type stackTracer interface {
        StackTrace() errors.StackTrace
}

The returned errors.StackTrace type is defined as

type StackTrace []Frame

The Frame type represents a call site in the stack trace. Frame supports the fmt.Formatter interface that can be used for printing information about the stack trace of this error. For example:

if err, ok := err.(stackTracer); ok {
        for _, f := range err.StackTrace() {
                fmt.Printf("%+s:%d\n", f, f)
        }
}

Although the stackTracer interface is not exported by this package, it is considered a part of its sBlocks public interface.

See the documentation for Frame.Format for more details.