How to only allow a certain number of io exceptions?

Question

I'm wondering if there is a good and standard way to only allow a certain number of IO exceptions (connection timeout etc.) before you stop trying and maybe send an automated email to let someone know there's a problem. I can think of an ugly way to do it with a try catch block that keeps a counter and checks the value of that counter before the try. Is there a more standard nicer way to implement that?

Answer 1

Just create an ìnt` variable that acts as a counter:

int counter = 0;
while (true){
    try{
        // do something
        break;
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        counter++;

        if (counter >= 10)
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }
}

It will catch the exception, print the stacktrace and only rethrow the exception if the counter exceeds 10. The email sending part will be more difficult for several reasons:

• You need a library do send emails (AFAIK)
• You need to configure the email server
• You need to authenticate against the server (The user either needs to supply a password or you need to hardcode the password --> bad practice)
• A possible reason for the IOException might be that the machine is not connected to the internet. Sending emails will fail in that case too.