Can I pass an exception as an argument to a function in python?

Question

I am new to python. I am trying to create a retry decorator that, when applied to a function, will keep retrying until some criteria is met (for simplicity, say retry 10 times).

def retry():
    def wrapper(func):
        for i in range(0,10):
            try:
                func()
                break
            except:
               continue
    return wrapper

Now that will retry on any exception. How can I change it such that it retries on specific exceptions. e.g, I want to use it like:

@retry(ValueError, AbcError)
def myfunc():
    //do something

I want myfunc to be retried only of it throws ValueError or AbcError.

Answer 1

You can supply a tuple of exceptions to the except .. block to catch:

from functools import wraps

def retry(*exceptions, **params):
    if not exceptions:
        exceptions = (Exception,)
    tries = params.get('tries', 10)

    def decorator(func):
        @wraps(func)
        def wrapper(*args, **kw):
            for i in range(tries):
                try:
                    return func(*args, **kw)
                except exceptions:
                    pass
        return wrapper
    return decorator

The catch-all *exceptions parameter will always result in a tuple. I've added a tries keyword as well, so you can configure the number of retries too:

@retry(ValueError, TypeError, tries=20)
def foo():
    pass

Demo:

>>> @retry(NameError, tries=3)
... def foo():
...     print 'Futzing the foo!'
...     bar
... 
>>> foo()
Futzing the foo!
Futzing the foo!
Futzing the foo!