hgwood / java8-streams-and-exceptions

Experiments with dealing with exceptions while using the Stream API

Java 8's new Stream API, being FP-inspired, doesn't play with exceptions very well.

For example, let's say we want to map a set of URI strings to URI objects:

uriStrings.stream().map(URI::create).collect(toList());

If one of the strings is not a valid URL, map() still runs OK because it does nothing but register the map operation, however, collect() does call URI::create, which throws an IllegalArgumentException and the overall operation fails without hope of retrieving the URIs that were valid. A custom collector cannot solve this issue because collect() computes the value before it hands it to the collector.

This is my attempt to solve this problem. The idea is that the collector has to be able to control when the exception-throwing function is called in order to catch exceptions and process them, so the call has to be delayed. To achieve this, values are mapped to supplier of values using a method I called lazy:

public static <T, R> Function<T, Supplier<R>> lazy(Function<T, R> f) {
    return input -> () -> f.apply(input);
}

Notice that f.apply() is never called inside lazy, nor is it called when the returned function is called. Mapping a lazy()-wrapped A to B function onto a stream of As results in a stream of suppliers of Bs. A downstream collector therefore gets to work with suppliers instead of values (URIs in the example). The collector can then choose to call (or not call) Supplier::get and properly catch exceptions thrown by it.

Examples

All the following examples take this data as input. The first and third strings are valid URIs: URI::create parses them OK. The second one make the same method choke and throw an IllegalArgumentException.

Collection<String> data = asList("http://elevated", "invalid\nurl", "http://abstractions");

Let's review different ways to manage a map operation of URI::create on this data.

Discarding failures

The discarding collector swallows exceptions of specified types. Exception types have to be explicitly passed in order to propagate other exceptions. The following code results in a stream containing "http://elevated" and "http://abstractions".

data.stream()
    .map(lazy(URI::create))
    .collect(discarding(IllegalArgumentException.class));

Silently stopping the computation on failure, returning partial results

The upTo collector also swallows exception, but it does not continue to read the input once the first exception is thrown. The following code results in a stream containing "http://elevated".

data.stream()
    .map(lazy(URI::create))
    .collect(upTo(IllegalArgumentException.class));

Throwing on failure, keeping partial results

The upToAndThrow collector wraps the first exception (of specified types) it encounters in a FailFastCollectException. The interesting bit is that the FailFastCollectException gives you access to the results that were successfully computed prior to the failure. In the following code, e.getResults() returns a stream containing "http://elevated".

try {
    data.stream()
        .map(lazy(URI::create))
        .collect(upToAndThrow(IllegalArgumentException.class));
} catch (FailFastCollectException e) {
    e.getCause();
    e.getResults();
}

Throwing at the end, keeping partial results

The throwingAtEnd collector reads the whole input, collecting both results and exceptions as it goes. Once the stream is fully read, it throws a CollectException that gives access to what it's been collecting. In the following code, e.getResults() returns a stream containing "http://elevated" and "http://abstractions" while e.getCauses() return a collection containing an IllegalArgumentException instance.

try {
    data.stream()
        .map(lazy(URI::create))
        .collect(throwingAtEnd(IllegalArgumentException.class));
} catch (CollectException e) {
    e.getCauses();
    e.getResults();
}

Dealing With Checked Exceptions

This method can also be used with checked exceptions, if they are first wrapped into unchecked ones.

data.stream()
    .map(lazy(sneaky(URI::new, e -> new CustomRuntimeException(e))))
    .collect(discarding(CustomRuntimeException.class));

The above code is simplified if the library provides a default wrapping.

data.stream()
    .map(lazy(sneaky(URI::new)))
    .collect(discardingFailures());

Acknowledgement

The motivation for this experiment was triggered by the work of Yohan Legat, a co-worker at Zenika. His work is also on GitHub and he wrote a article (in French) on Zenika's technical blog.

java8-streams-and-exceptions's Issues

Please add a license to this project

Hello,

I found your project and I think the concepts are really useful. Could you add a license to the repository so its clear if we could use your code directly, or as a library, etc?

Do you know of other similar implementations?