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Further to the recent thread about throwing exceptions from user code, I would like to clarify exactly what a SAX Driver should do when it encounters exceptions. There are two places that an application may be told about an exception: on return from the parse() function or via one of the ErrorHandler interfaces. I'm looking for clarification about how the following situations should be handled:- 1) The SAX Driver encounters some kind of system exception, let's say it gets an I/O error attempting to read the document entity. Should this (a) be thrown as a SAXException returned from parse() or (b) should it be wrapped in a SAXParseException and handed over to ErrorHandler::fatalError()? 2) A handler method, let's assume EntityResolver::resolveEntity() encounters an unrecoverable problem. It traps an IOException. It decides to wrap this in a SAXException and throw it. What should happen next? Should this exception be (a) returned to the caller of parse() or (b) should it be wrapped in a SAXParseException and reported to an ErrorHandler if one exists? 3) If you answered (b) to either of the above, then what do you think should be done when ErrorHandler::warning() throws an Exception. (a) return it to parse() or (b) wrap the exception in a SAXParseException and call ErrorHandler::fatalError(). 4) Finally, what about when ErrorHandler::fatalError() rethrows the SAXParseException, as is the case with DefaultHandler? This must obviously be returned to parse() otherwise we'd be in a real pickle. I believe the correct answer to all of the above is (a), throwing a SAXException will cause the SAX Driver to terminate and return the thrown exception to the caller of parse(). Without this behaviour how could the application force a parse to cease prematurely? It couldn't because the ErrorHandler may deal with it and allow the parse to continue. So, this brings me to my final question: should a SAX Driver ever call the ErrorHandler with a real (i.e. unexpected) exception, or will these always be returned to the caller of parse(). Regards ~Rob -- Rob Lugt ElCel Technology http://www.elcel.com/
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