Crate failchain

This is a companion crate to the failure crate, which aims to recover the ergonomics of error_chain. It does this by bringing back:

• chain_err
• non-verbose Error, ErrorKind pairs
• support for bail! and ensure! with custom ErrorKind-s

The failure library recommends three different patterns for errors. This library implementes th complex one (and the most useful one) but without all the boilerplate.

What it looks like

mod errors {
    // errors.rs
    use failchain::{BoxedError, ChainErrorKind};
    use failure::Fail;
    use std::path::PathBuf;
    use std::result::Result as StdResult;

    pub type Error = BoxedError<ErrorKind>; // Use `UnboxedError` instead for
                                            // non-allocating, but bigger `Error`.
    pub type Result<T> = StdResult<T, Error>;

    #[derive(Clone, Eq, PartialEq, Debug, Fail)]
    pub enum ErrorKind {
        #[fail(display = "Metadata I/O error {:?}.", 0)]
        MetadataIo(PathBuf),

        #[fail(display = "Corrupt metadata file: {}", 0)]
        CorruptMetadata(String),

        #[fail(display = "WAD I/O error {:?}.", 0)]
        WadIo(PathBuf),

        #[fail(display = "Corrupt WAD file: {}", 0)]
        CorruptWad(String),
    }

    impl ChainErrorKind for ErrorKind {
        type Error = Error;
    }
}

mod main {
    // main.rs
    use super::errors::{ErrorKind, Result};
    use failchain::{
        bail,
        ensure,
        ResultExt, // for `chain_err`,
    };
    use std::fs::File;
    use std::io::Read;
    use std::path::Path;

    fn validate_metadata(path: &Path, metadata: &str) -> Result<()> {
        // `ensure` is like `assert` (or failure's ensure), except it allows you to
        // specify the `ErrorKind`.
        ensure!(
            !metadata.is_empty(),
            ErrorKind::CorruptMetadata(format!("metadata file {:?} is empty", path))
        );

        // a special mode of `ensure` works for functions that return `ErrorKind`-s
        // and take a single string as argument:
        ensure!(
            metadata.len() > 100,
            ErrorKind::CorruptMetadata, // Any FnOnce(String) -> ErrorKind
            "metadata file {:?} is too long", // Rest of arguments are format args.
            path,
        );

        // `bail` is like `ensure`, but without the condition and always returns
        // early.
        bail!(
            ErrorKind::CorruptMetadata,
            "validation isn't actually implemented"
        );
    }

    fn load(wad: &Path, metadata: &Path) -> Result<()> {
        // `chain_err` stashes the original error as the `cause` of a new error.
        let wad_file = File::open(wad).chain_err(|| ErrorKind::WadIo(wad.to_owned()))?;

        let mut metadata_content = String::new();

        // `chain_inspect_err` stashes the original error as the `cause` of the new
        // error, but it first allows the callback to inspect it.
        let metadata_file = File::open(metadata)
            .and_then(|mut file| file.read_to_string(&mut metadata_content))
            .chain_inspect_err(|_io_error| ErrorKind::MetadataIo(metadata.to_owned()))?;

        validate_metadata(metadata, &metadata_content)?;

        Ok(())
    }
}

Macros

bail	Returns early with an error built from an error kind.
ensure	Returns early with an error built from an error kind if a given condition is false.

Structs

BoxedError	An error type which stores the backtrace, cause pointer and error kind behind a Box.
UnboxedError	An error type which stores the backtrace, cause pointer and error kind inline.

Traits

ChainErrorKind	Trait which must be implemented by ErrorKind-s.
ResultExt	Extension trait which adds the family of .chain_err methods to Result objects.