CA1065: Do not raise exceptions in unexpected locations
Property | Value |
---|---|
Rule ID | CA1065 |
Title | Do not raise exceptions in unexpected locations |
Category | Design |
Fix is breaking or non-breaking | Non-breaking |
Enabled by default in .NET 9 | No |
Cause
A method that is not expected to throw exceptions throws an exception.
Rule description
Methods that are not expected to throw exceptions can be categorized as follows:
- Property get methods
- Event accessor methods
- Equals methods
- GetHashCode methods
- ToString methods
- Static constructors
- Finalizers
- Dispose methods
- Equality operators
- Implicit cast operators
The following sections discuss these method types.
Property get methods
Properties are basically smart fields. Therefore, they should behave like a field as much as possible. Fields don't throw exceptions and neither should properties. If you have a property that throws an exception, consider making it a method.
The following exceptions can be thrown from a property get method:
- System.InvalidOperationException and all derivatives (including System.ObjectDisposedException)
- System.NotSupportedException and all derivatives
- System.ArgumentException (only from indexed get)
- System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException (only from indexed get)
Event accessor methods
Event accessors should be simple operations that don't throw exceptions. An event should not throw an exception when you try to add or remove an event handler.
The following exceptions can be thrown from an event accessor:
- System.InvalidOperationException and all derivatives (including System.ObjectDisposedException)
- System.NotSupportedException and all derivatives
- System.ArgumentException and derivatives
Equals methods
The following Equals methods should not throw exceptions:
An Equals
method should return true
or false
instead of throwing an exception. For example, if Equals
is passed two mismatched types, it should just return false
instead of throwing an ArgumentException.
GetHashCode methods
The following GetHashCode
methods should usually not throw exceptions:
GetHashCode
should always return a value. Otherwise, you can lose items in the hash table.
The versions of GetHashCode
that take an argument can throw an ArgumentException. However, Object.GetHashCode
should never throw an exception.
ToString methods
The debugger uses System.Object.ToString to help display information about objects in string format. Therefore, ToString
should not change the state of an object, and it shouldn't throw exceptions.
Static constructors
Throwing exceptions from a static constructor causes the type to be unusable in the current application domain. You should have a good reason (such as a security issue) for throwing an exception from a static constructor.
Finalizers
Throwing an exception from a finalizer causes the CLR to fail fast, which tears down the process. Therefore, avoid throwing exceptions in a finalizer.
Dispose methods
A System.IDisposable.Dispose method should not throw an exception. Dispose
is often called as part of the cleanup logic in a finally
clause. Therefore, explicitly throwing an exception from Dispose
forces the user to add exception handling inside the finally
clause.
The Dispose(false)
code path should never throw exceptions, because Dispose
is almost always called from a finalizer.
Equality operators (==, !=)
Like Equals
methods, equality operators should return either true
or false
, and should not throw exceptions.
Implicit cast operators
Because the user is often unaware that an implicit cast operator has been called, an exception thrown by the implicit cast operator is unexpected. Therefore, no exceptions should be thrown from implicit cast operators.
How to fix violations
For property getters, either change the logic so that it no longer has to throw an exception, or change the property into a method.
For all other method types listed previously, change the logic so that it no longer must throw an exception.
When to suppress warnings
If the violation was caused by an exception declaration instead of a thrown exception, it is safe to suppress a warning from this rule.
Suppress a warning
If you just want to suppress a single violation, add preprocessor directives to your source file to disable and then re-enable the rule.
#pragma warning disable CA1065
// The code that's violating the rule is on this line.
#pragma warning restore CA1065
To disable the rule for a file, folder, or project, set its severity to none
in the configuration file.
[*.{cs,vb}]
dotnet_diagnostic.CA1065.severity = none
For more information, see How to suppress code analysis warnings.