Adding Context to Errors
The widely used anyhow crate can help you add contextual information to your errors and allows you to have fewer custom error types:
use std::{fs, io};use std::io::Read;use anyhow::{Context, Result, bail};fn read_username(path: &str) -> Result<String> {let mut username = String::with_capacity(100);fs::File::open(path).context(format!("Failed to open {path}"))?.read_to_string(&mut username).context("Failed to read")?;if username.is_empty() {bail!("Found no username in {path}");}Ok(username)}fn main() {//fs::write("config.dat", "").unwrap();match read_username("config.dat") {Ok(username) => println!("Username: {username}"),Err(err) => println!("Error: {err:?}"),}}
Speaker Notes
anyhow::Result<V>is a type alias forResult<V, anyhow::Error>.anyhow::Erroris essentially a wrapper aroundBox<dyn Error>. As such itβs again generally not a good choice for the public API of a library, but is widely used in applications.- Actual error type inside of it can be extracted for examination if necessary.
- Functionality provided by
anyhow::Result<T>may be familiar to Go developers, as it provides similar usage patterns and ergonomics to(T, error)from Go.