Lesson 15. JavaScript Try…Catch Statement

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JavaScript - Catching Errors

When browsing Web pages on the internet, we all have seen a JavaScript alert box telling us there is a runtime error and asking “Do you wish to debug?”. Error message like this may be useful for developers but not for users. When users see errors, they often leave the Web page.

This chapter will teach you how to trap and handle JavaScript error messages, so you don’t lose your audience.

There are two ways of catching errors in a Web page:

By using the try…catch statement (available in IE5+, Mozilla 1.0, and Netscape 6)
By using the onerror event. This is the old standard solution to catch errors (available since Netscape 3)

Try…Catch Statement

The try…catch statement allows you to test a block of code for errors. The try block contains the code to be run, and the catch block contains the code to be executed if an error occurs.

Syntax

try
{
//Run some code here
}
catch(err)
{
//Handle errors here
}

Note that try…catch is written in lowercase letters. Using uppercase letters will generate a JavaScript error!

Example 1

The example below contains a script that is supposed to display the message “Welcome guest!” when you click on a button. However, there’s a typo in the message() function. alert() is misspelled as adddlert(). A JavaScript error occurs:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function message()
{
adddlert("Welcome guest!");
}
</script>
</head>

<body>
<input type="button" value="View message" onclick="message()" />
</body>

</html>

To take more appropriate action when an error occurs, you can add a try…catch statement.

The example below contains the “Welcome guest!” example rewritten to use the try…catch statement. Since alert() is misspelled, a JavaScript error occurs. However, this time, the catch block catches the error and executes a custom code to handle it. The code displays a custom error message informing the user what happened:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
var txt=""
function message()
{
try
  {
  adddlert("Welcome guest!");
  }
catch(err)
  {
  txt="There was an error on this page.\n\n";
  txt+="Error description: " + err.description + "\n\n";
  txt+="Click OK to continue.\n\n";
  alert(txt);
  }
}
</script>
</head>

<body>
<input type="button" value="View message" onclick="message()" />
</body>

</html>

Example 2

The next example uses a confirm box to display a custom message telling users they can click OK to continue viewing the page or click Cancel to go to the homepage. If the confirm method returns false, the user clicked Cancel, and the code redirects the user. If the confirm method returns true, the code does nothing:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
var txt=""
function message()
{
try
  {
  adddlert("Welcome guest!");
  }
catch(err)
  {
  txt="There was an error on this page.\n\n";
  txt+="Click OK to continue viewing this page,\n";
  txt+="or Cancel to return to the home page.\n\n";
  if(!confirm(txt))
    {
    document.location.href="http://www.w3schools.com/";
    }
  }
}
</script>
</head>

<body>
<input type="button" value="View message" onclick="message()" />
</body>

</html>

The onerror Event

The onerror event will be explained soon, but first you will learn how to use the throw statement to create an exception. The throw statement can be used together with the try…catch statement.

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Posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 5:14 pm under Javascript For Beginners \| RSS 2.0 Feed

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