Qt/C++ Error handling

Question

I've been doing a lot of research about handling errors with Qt/C++ and I'm still as lost as when I started. Maybe I'm looking for an easy way out (like other languages provide). One, in particular, provides for an unhandled exception which I use religiously. When the program encounters a problem, it throws the unhandled exception so that I can create my own error report. That report gets sent from my customers machine to a server online which I then read later.

The problem that I'm having with C++ is that any error handling that's done has to be thought of BEFORE hand (think try/catch or massive conditionals). In my experience, problems in code are not thought of before hand else there wouldn't be a problem to begin with.

Writing a cross-platform application without a cross-platform error handling/reporting/trace mechanism is a little scary to me.

My question is: Is there any kind of Qt or C++ Specific "catch-all" error trapping mechanism that I can use in my application so that, if something does go wrong I can, at least, write a report before it crashes?

Example:

class MainWindow: public QMainWindow
{
[...]

public slots:
 void add_clicked();
}

void MainWindow::add_clicked()
{
    QFileDialog dlg(this, Qt::Sheet);
    QString filename = dlg.getOpenFileName(this);

    if(!filename.isEmpty())
    {
        QStringList path = filename.split(QDir::separator());
        QString file = path.at(path.count()); // Index out of range assertion.

        if(!lst_tables->openDatabase(filename))
        {
            [...]
        }
    }
}

I want this error to be caught as an unhandled exception AND the application to quit without showing the user the default crash window on Windows/Mac operating system. I just want it to quit nicely after writing the assertion message to a file, etc.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4661883/qt-c-error-handling

Answer 1

Override QCoreApplication::notify() and add try-catch there. That, and something in main() covers most cases in my experience.

Here's sort-of how I do it. Note that I'm using C++ RTTI here, not Qt's version, but that's just for convenience in our apps. Also, we put up a QMessageBox with the info and a link to our log-file. You should expand according to your own needs.

bool QMyApplication::notify(QObject* receiver, QEvent* even)
{
    try {
        return QApplication::notify(receiver, event);
    } catch (std::exception &e) {
        qFatal("Error %s sending event %s to object %s (%s)", 
            e.what(), typeid(*event).name(), qPrintable(receiver->objectName()),
            typeid(*receiver).name());
    } catch (...) {
        qFatal("Error <unknown> sending event %s to object %s (%s)", 
            typeid(*event).name(), qPrintable(receiver->objectName()),
            typeid(*receiver).name());
    }        

    // qFatal aborts, so this isn't really necessary
    // but you might continue if you use a different logging lib
    return false;
}

In addition we use the __try, __except on Windows to catch asyncronous exceptions (access violations). Google Breakpad could probably serve as a cross-platform substitute for that.