Re: Throw Exceptions from setters: second opinion

amygdala wrote:
Hi all,

Recently somebody on a forum told me, and nearly convinced me, that throwing Exceptions from setters is bad practice. He stated that setters should only return boolean false if the provided input is not valid, since that is what they are expected to do: validate input and simply tell wheter it's valid or not. Furthermore he stated that throwing Exceptions is only meaningful when an internal routine of the class encounters invalid data. Does this sound reasonable to you? I'm not sure yet myself. Love to hear your opinions on the matter.

Thanks in advace.

Not at all. It's actually quite a good idea to throw exceptions from setters.

Returning true/false from a setter is old school - from before the time exceptions existed. Nowadays, a better way is to return the value you are setting it to. That way you can chain operations.

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