handled

Handled is perhaps the most simple error handling library there is. It revolves around this trait:

pub trait Handle<T> {
    fn handle(&self) -> Option<T> {
        None
    }
}

pub trait HandleResult<T>: Handle<T> {
    fn handle_result(self) -> Result<Self, T> where Self: Sized {
        if let Some(err) = self.handle() {
            Err(err)
        } else {
            Ok(self)
        }
    }
}

Implement Handle<T> for custom T and all consumers of your code can easily extract properties of the error without having to match on deeply nested errors to extract details. It requires writing code, but it composes well and I'd wager Claude understands it at least as well as us, so have it write the code.

To that end, the library is literally just the trait shown above and some helpers.

Example: Rate Limiting

Imagine you had a complex error type, but wanted to uniformly extract rate limiting information from the different variants of the type. One way to do so would be to create a match that's deeply aware of every variant of every variant. It can get combinatoric. Instead, what we can do is define a Handle<RateLimit> for each type, and then extract the rate limit from the errors in a way that allows local decisions to be made for each error variant.

It looks something like this:

use handled::{Handle, HandleResult};

#[derive(Clone, Debug, Eq, PartialEq)]
struct RateLimit {
    wait_ms: u32,
    debug: String,
}

impl std::fmt::Display for RateLimit {
    fn fmt(&self, f: &mut std::fmt::Formatter) -> std::fmt::Result {
        write!(f, "{self:?}")
    }
}

impl Handle<RateLimit> for RateLimit {
    fn handle(&self) -> Option<Self> {
        Some(self.clone())
    }
}

#[derive(Clone, Debug)]
enum MyCustomError {
    Variant1(Type1),
    Variant2(Type2),
    Variant3(Error1),
}

impl std::fmt::Display for MyCustomError {
    fn fmt(&self, fmt: &mut std::fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> Result<(), std::fmt::Error> {
        write!(fmt, "{self:?}")
    }
}

impl std::error::Error for MyCustomError {
    fn source(&self) -> Option<&(dyn std::error::Error + 'static)> {
        match self {
            Self::Variant1(_) => None,
            Self::Variant2(_) => None,
            Self::Variant3(e) => Some(e),
        }
    }
}

impl Handle<RateLimit> for MyCustomError {
    fn handle(&self) -> Option<RateLimit> {
        match self {
            Self::Variant1(_) => None,
            Self::Variant2(x) => x.handle(),
            Self::Variant3(x) => x.handle(),
        }
    }
}

#[derive(Clone, Debug)]
enum Type1 {
    SomeErrorCode,
}

#[derive(Clone, Debug)]
struct Type2 {
    code: u16,
    text: String,
}

impl Handle<RateLimit> for Type2 {
    fn handle(&self) -> Option<RateLimit> {
        if self.code == 429 {
            Some(RateLimit {
                // NOTE(rescrv):  When copying, do not use this value.
                wait_ms: 42,
                debug: self.text.clone(),
            })
        } else {
            None
        }
    }
}

#[derive(Clone, Debug)]
struct Error1 {}

impl std::fmt::Display for Error1 {
    fn fmt(&self, fmt: &mut std::fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> Result<(), std::fmt::Error> {
        write!(fmt, "{self:?}")
    }
}

impl std::error::Error for Error1 {}

impl Handle<RateLimit> for Error1 {
    fn handle(&self) -> Option<RateLimit> {
        Some(RateLimit {
            // NOTE(rescrv):  When copying, do not use this value.
            wait_ms: 84,
            debug: "Slow down!".to_string(),
        })
    }
}

// A non-rate-limiting error.
let err1 = MyCustomError::Variant1(Type1::SomeErrorCode);
let rate1: Option<RateLimit> = err1.handle();
assert!(rate1.is_none());

// An HTTP 429 turns into a slow down.
let err2 = MyCustomError::Variant2(Type2 {
    code: 429,
    text: "Slow down!".to_string(),
});
let rate2: Option<RateLimit> = err2.handle();
assert_eq!(
    Some(RateLimit {
        wait_ms: 42,
        debug: "Slow down!".to_string()
    }),
    rate2
);

// This error variant also turns into a rate limit.
let err3 = MyCustomError::Variant3(Error1 {});
let rate3: Option<RateLimit> = err3.handle();
assert_eq!(
    Some(RateLimit {
        wait_ms: 84,
        debug: "Slow down!".to_string()
    }),
    rate3
);

// It's possible to extract a rate limit as an error.  You can imagine implementing
// `From<RateLimit>` for your error type to make it so this combines well with the question-mark
// operator.
let result = Err::<(), _>(MyCustomError::Variant2(Type2 {
    code: 429,
    text: "Slow down!".to_string(),
}));
let result: Result<_, RateLimit> = result.handle_result();
assert_eq!(
    RateLimit {
        wait_ms: 42,
        debug: "Slow down!".to_string()
    },
    result.unwrap_err()
);

// If the result cannot convert, it will return Ok(Self) so that you can chain the results.
let result1 = Err::<(), _>(MyCustomError::Variant1(Type1::SomeErrorCode));
assert_eq!("Err(Variant1(SomeErrorCode))", format!("{result1:?}"));
let result2: Result<_, RateLimit> = result1.handle_result();
assert_eq!("Ok(Err(Variant1(SomeErrorCode)))", format!("{result2:?}"));