Author: Jared

I use the python requests library to make HTTP requests. Handling exceptions and giving the non-technical end user a friendly message can be a challenge when the original exception is wrapped up in an exception chain. For example:

import requests

url = "http://one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight"
try:
    resp = requests.get(url)
except requests.RequestException as e:
    print("Couldn't contact", url, ":", e)

Prints:

Couldn’t contact http://one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight : HTTPConnectionPool(host=’one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight’, port=80): Max retries exceeded with url: / (Caused by NewConnectionError(‘<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x7f527329c978>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno -2] Name or service not known’,))

And that’s a mouthful.

I want to tell the end user that DNS isn’t working, rather than showing the ugly stringified error message. How do I do that, in python3? Are python3 exceptions iterable? No. So I searched the internet, and found inspiration from the raven project. I adapted their code in two different ways to give me the result I wanted.

Update Aug 10: See the end of this blog post for a more elegant solution.

import socket
import requests
import sys

def chained_exceptions(exc_info=None):
    """
    Adapted from: https://github.com/getsentry/raven-python/pull/811/files?diff=unified

    Return a generator iterator over an exception's chain.

    The exceptions are yielded from outermost to innermost (i.e. last to
    first when viewing a stack trace).
    """
    if not exc_info or exc_info is True:
        exc_info = sys.exc_info()

    if not exc_info:
        raise ValueError("No exception found")

    yield exc_info
    exc_type, exc, exc_traceback = exc_info

    while True:
        if exc.__suppress_context__:
            # Then __cause__ should be used instead.
            exc = exc.__cause__
        else:
            exc = exc.__context__
        if exc is None:
            break
        yield type(exc), exc, exc.__traceback__

def chained_exception_types(e=None):
    """
    Return a generator iterator of exception types in the exception chain

    The exceptions are yielded from outermost to innermost (i.e. last to
    first when viewing a stack trace).

    Adapted from: https://github.com/getsentry/raven-python/pull/811/files?diff=unified
    """
    if not e or e is True:
        e = sys.exc_info()[1]

    if not e:
        raise ValueError("No exception found")

    yield type(e)

    while True:
        if e.__suppress_context__:
            # Then __cause__ should be used instead.
            e = e.__cause__
        else:
            e = e.__context__
        if e is None:
            break
        yield type(e)

saved_exception = None
try:
    resp = requests.get("http://one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight")
except Exception as e:
    saved_exception = e
    if socket.gaierror in chained_exception_types(e):
        print("Found socket.gaierror in exception block via e")
    if socket.gaierror in chained_exception_types():
        print("Found socket.gaierror in exception block via traceback")
    if socket.gaierror in chained_exception_types(True):
        print("Found socket.gaierror in exception block via traceback")

if saved_exception:
    print("\nIterating exception chain for a saved exception...")
    for t, ex, tb in chained_exceptions((type(saved_exception), saved_exception, saved_exception.__traceback__)):
        print("\ttype:", t, "Exception:", ex)
        if t == socket.gaierror:
            print("\t*** Found socket.gaierror:", ex)
    if socket.gaierror in chained_exception_types(saved_exception):
        print("\t*** Found socket.gaierror via chained_exception_types")

Here’s the output:

Found socket.gaierror in exception block via e
Found socket.gaierror in exception block via traceback
Found socket.gaierror in exception block via traceback

Iterating exception chain for a saved exception...
    type: <class 'requests.exceptions.ConnectionError'> Exception: HTTPConnectionPool(host='one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight', port=80): Max retries exceeded with url: / (Caused by NewConnectionError('<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x7fae7d0bfa20>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno -2] Name or service not known',))
    type: <class 'requests.packages.urllib3.exceptions.MaxRetryError'> Exception: HTTPConnectionPool(host='one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight', port=80): Max retries exceeded with url: / (Caused by NewConnectionError('<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x7fae7d0bfa20>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno -2] Name or service not known',))
    type: <class 'requests.packages.urllib3.exceptions.NewConnectionError'> Exception: <requests.packages.urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x7fae7d0bfa20>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
    type: <class 'socket.gaierror'> Exception: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
    *** Found socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
    *** Found socket.gaierror via chained_exception_types()

Now I can write the following code:

url = "http://one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight"
try:
    resp = requests.get(url)
except requests.RequestException as e:
    if socket.gaierror in chained_exception_types(e):
        print("Couldn't get IP address for hostname in URL", url, " -- connect device to Internet")
    else:
        raise

Very nice — just what I wanted.

Note that Python 2 does not support exception chaining, so this only works in Python 3.

Aug 10: A colleague of mine, Lance Anderson, came up with a far more elegant solution:

import requests
import socket

class IterableException(object):

        def __init__(self, ex):
                self.ex = ex

        def __iter__(self):
                self.next = self.ex
                return self

        def __next__(self):
                if self.next.__suppress_context__:
                        self.next = self.next.__cause__
                else:
                        self.next = self.next.__context__
                if self.next:
                        return self.next
                else:
                        raise StopIteration

url = "http://one.two.threeFourFiveSixSevenEight"

try:
        resp = requests.get(url)
except requests.RequestException as e:
        ie = IterableException(e)
        if socket.gaierror in [type(x) for x in ie]:
                print("Couldn't get IP address for hostname in URL", url, " -- connect device to Internet.")