Raise-Specific-Error

Sourcery rule id: raise-specific-error

Description

Raise a specific error instead of the general Exception or BaseException

Match

raise Exception

Explanation

If a piece of code raises a specific exception type rather than the generic BaseException or Exception, the calling code can:

• get more information about what type of error it is
• define specific exception handling for it

This way, callers of the code can handle the error appropriately.

How can you solve this?

• Use one of the built-in exceptions of the standard library.
• Define your own error class that subclasses Exception.

So instead of having code raising Exception or BaseException like

if incorrect_input(value):
    raise Exception("The input is incorrect")

you can have code raising a specific error like

if incorrect_input(value):
    raise ValueError("The input is incorrect")

or

class IncorrectInputError(Exception):
    pass


if incorrect_input(value):
    raise IncorrectInputError("The input is incorrect")