Strengthening code with possibly useless exception handling
- by rdurand
Is it a good practice to implement useless exception handling, just in case another part of the code is not coded correctly?
Basic example
A simple one, so I don't loose everybody :).
Let's say I'm writing an app that will display a person's information (name, address, etc.), the data being extracted from a database. Let's say I'm the one coding the UI part, and someone else is writing the DB query code.
Now imagine that the specifications of your app say that if the person's information is incomplete (let's say, the name is missing in the database), the person coding the query should handle this by returning "NA" for the missing field.
What if the query is poorly coded and doesn't handle this case? What if the guy who wrote the query handles you an incomplete result, and when you try to display the informations, everything crashes, because your code isn't prepared to display empty stuff?
This example is very basic. I believe most of you will say "it's not your problem, you're not responsible for this crash". But, it's still your part of the code which is crashing.
Another example
Let's say now I'm the one writing the query. The specifications don't say the same as above, but that the guy writing the "insert" query should make sure all the fields are complete when adding a person to the database to avoid inserting incomplete information. Should I protect my "select" query to make sure I give the UI guy complete informations?
The questions
What if the specifications don't explicitly say "this guy is the one in charge of handling this situation"? What if a third person implements another query (similar to the first one, but on another DB) and uses your UI code to display it, but doesn't handle this case in his code?
Should I do what's necessary to prevent a possible crash, even if I'm not the one supposed to handle the bad case?
I'm not looking for an answer like "(s)he's the one responsible for the crash", as I'm not solving a conflict here, I'd like to know, should I protect my code against situations it's not my responsibility to handle? Here, a simple "if empty do something" would suffice.
In general, this question tackles redundant exception handling. I'm asking it because when I work alone on a project, I may code 2-3 times a similar exception handling in successive functions, "just in case" I did something wrong and let a bad case come through.
