Next up in our deep dive through the Ruby Exception Handling series we'll be dog-paddling our way around the KeyError. The KeyError is a descendant of the IndexError. Unlike the IndexError, which deals with Arrays, the KeyError deals with Hashes instead. Specifically, a KeyError occurs when a reference to a key within a hash is invalid or missing.
Throughout today's article we'll examine exactly what the KeyError means, see where it fits within the Ruby Exception class hierarchy, and analyze how to handle KeyErrors when they're raised, so let's get to it!
The Technical Rundown
- All Ruby exceptions are descendants of the
Exceptionclass, or a subclass therein. StandardErroris a direct descendant of theExceptionclass, and is also a superclass with many descendants of its own.IndexErroris a direct descendant of theStandardErrorclass, and is a superclass to a few descendants of its own.KeyErroris a direct descendant of theIndexError.
When Should You Use It?
Unlike the IndexError that is associated with improper use of Arrays, the KeyError is associated with improper use of Hashes. A Ruby Hash is effectively a dictionary object that contains a series of key/value pairs. This data structure is also commonly referred to as an associative array.
Just as with Arrays, a Hash can be created in a number of ways:
# Implicit and inline.
book = {
"title" => "The Stand",
"author" => "Stephen King",
"page_count" => 823,
}# Alternative symbol syntax for keys.
book = {
title: "The Stand",
author: "Stephen King",
page_count: 823,
}# Using Hash.new for initialization, then inline key/value assignment.
book = Hash.new
book[:title] = "The Stand"
book[:author] = "Stephen King"
book[:page_count] = 823
Also like Arrays, there are many methods that can be used to manipulate our Hash once initialized. We can use similar syntax to that of assignment to also retrieve values:
book = {
title: "The Stand",
author: "Stephen King",
page_count: 823,
}
puts book[:title] #=> "The Stand"
puts book["author"] #=> "Stephen King"
puts book.fetch(:page_count) #=> 823
As with the Array.fetch method, we can also call the Hash.fetch method to retrieve a value from our Hash by passing the key value as the first argument, as seen above. However, if we pass an invalid key to Hash.fetch, let's see what happens:
def print_exception(exception, explicit)
puts "[#{explicit ? 'EXPLICIT' : 'INEXPLICIT'}] #{exception.class}: #{exception.message}"
puts exception.backtrace.join("\n")
endbegin
book = {
title: "The Stand",
author: "Stephen King",
page_count: 823,
}puts book.fetch(:published)
rescue KeyError => e
print_exception(e, true)
rescue => e
print_exception(e, false)
end
As expected, we raised a KeyError, since :published was not specified as a key in our Hash:
[EXPLICIT] KeyError: key not found: :published
As a workaround, we can pass a second argument to Hash.fetch, which specifies a default value to return if the Hash doesn't contain a matching key for the value we provided:
def print_exception(exception, explicit)
puts "[#{explicit ? 'EXPLICIT' : 'INEXPLICIT'}] #{exception.class}: #{exception.message}"
puts exception.backtrace.join("\n")
endbegin
book = {
title: "The Stand",
author: "Stephen King",
page_count: 823,
}puts book.fetch(:published, Time.now.to_s)
rescue KeyError => e
print_exception(e, true)
rescue => e
print_exception(e, false)
end
Now, rather than raising a KeyError, our call to Hash.fetch notices a default value of Time.now.to_s, and returns that as our output instead:
2017-03-16 18:02:14 -0700
Finally, just as with Array.fetch, we can also initialize our call to Hash.fetch with an associated block, which forces Ruby to execute the block code if, and only if, the passed key value is invalid:
def print_exception(exception, explicit)
puts "[#{explicit ? 'EXPLICIT' : 'INEXPLICIT'}] #{exception.class}: #{exception.message}"
puts exception.backtrace.join("\n")
endbegin
book = {
title: "The Stand",
author: "Stephen King",
page_count: 823,
}puts book.fetch(:published) { |key|
"Key '#{key}' not found."
}
rescue KeyError => e
print_exception(e, true)
rescue => e
print_exception(e, false)
end
Now, instead of raising a KeyError, our output shows we gracefully failed out of that Hash.fetch method call:
Key 'published' not found.
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