How do I raise the same Exception with a custom message in Python?

Question

I have this try block in my code:

try:
    do_something_that_might_raise_an_exception()
except ValueError as err:
    errmsg = \'My custom error         


        

Answer 1

Python 3 built-in exceptions have the strerror field:

except ValueError as err:
  err.strerror = "New error message"
  raise err

Answer 2

This only works with Python 3. You can modify the exception's original arguments and add your own arguments.

An exception remembers the args it was created with. I presume this is so that you can modify the exception.

In the function reraise we prepend the exception's original arguments with any new arguments that we want (like a message). Finally we re-raise the exception while preserving the trace-back history.

def reraise(e, *args):
  '''re-raise an exception with extra arguments
  :param e: The exception to reraise
  :param args: Extra args to add to the exception
  '''

  # e.args is a tuple of arguments that the exception with instantiated with.
  #
  e.args = args + e.args

  # Recreate the expection and preserve the traceback info so thta we can see 
  # where this exception originated.
  #
  raise e.with_traceback(e.__traceback__)   


def bad():
  raise ValueError('bad')

def very():
  try:
    bad()
  except Exception as e:
    reraise(e, 'very')

def very_very():
  try:
    very()
  except Exception as e:
    reraise(e, 'very')

very_very()

output

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.py", line 35, in <module>
    very_very()
  File "main.py", line 30, in very_very
    reraise(e, 'very')
  File "main.py", line 15, in reraise
    raise e.with_traceback(e.__traceback__)
  File "main.py", line 28, in very_very
    very()
  File "main.py", line 24, in very
    reraise(e, 'very')
  File "main.py", line 15, in reraise
    raise e.with_traceback(e.__traceback__)
  File "main.py", line 22, in very
    bad()
  File "main.py", line 18, in bad
    raise ValueError('bad')
ValueError: ('very', 'very', 'bad')

Answer 3

The current answer did not work good for me, if the exception is not re-caught the appended message is not shown.

But doing like below both keeps the trace and shows the appended message regardless if the exception is re-caught or not.

try:
  raise ValueError("Original message")
except ValueError as err:
  t, v, tb = sys.exc_info()
  raise t, ValueError(err.message + " Appended Info"), tb

( I used Python 2.7, have not tried it in Python 3 )

Answer 4

This is the function I use to modify the exception message in Python 2.7 and 3.x while preserving the original traceback. It requires six

def reraise_modify(caught_exc, append_msg, prepend=False):
    """Append message to exception while preserving attributes.

    Preserves exception class, and exception traceback.

    Note:
        This function needs to be called inside an except because
        `sys.exc_info()` requires the exception context.

    Args:
        caught_exc(Exception): The caught exception object
        append_msg(str): The message to append to the caught exception
        prepend(bool): If True prepend the message to args instead of appending

    Returns:
        None

    Side Effects:
        Re-raises the exception with the preserved data / trace but
        modified message
    """
    ExceptClass = type(caught_exc)
    # Keep old traceback
    traceback = sys.exc_info()[2]
    if not caught_exc.args:
        # If no args, create our own tuple
        arg_list = [append_msg]
    else:
        # Take the last arg
        # If it is a string
        # append your message.
        # Otherwise append it to the
        # arg list(Not as pretty)
        arg_list = list(caught_exc.args[:-1])
        last_arg = caught_exc.args[-1]
        if isinstance(last_arg, str):
            if prepend:
                arg_list.append(append_msg + last_arg)
            else:
                arg_list.append(last_arg + append_msg)
        else:
            arg_list += [last_arg, append_msg]
    caught_exc.args = tuple(arg_list)
    six.reraise(ExceptClass,
                caught_exc,
                traceback)

Answer 5

If you're lucky enough to only support python 3.x, this really becomes a thing of beauty :)

raise from

We can chain the exceptions using raise from.

try:
    1 / 0
except ZeroDivisionError as e:
    raise Exception('Smelly socks') from e

In this case, the exception your caller would catch has the line number of the place where we raise our exception.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 2, in <module>
    1 / 0
ZeroDivisionError: division by zero

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 4, in <module>
    raise Exception('Smelly socks') from e
Exception: Smelly socks

Notice the bottom exception only has the stacktrace from where we raised our exception. Your caller could still get the original exception by accessing the __cause__ attribute of the exception they catch.

with_traceback

Or you can use with_traceback.

try:
    1 / 0
except ZeroDivisionError as e:
    raise Exception('Smelly socks').with_traceback(e.__traceback__)

Using this form, the exception your caller would catch has the traceback from where the original error occurred.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 2, in <module>
    1 / 0
ZeroDivisionError: division by zero

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 4, in <module>
    raise Exception('Smelly socks').with_traceback(e.__traceback__)
  File "test.py", line 2, in <module>
    1 / 0
Exception: Smelly socks

Notice the bottom exception has the line where we performed the invalid division as well as the line where we reraise the exception.

Answer 6

if you want to custom the error type, a simple thing you can do is to define an error class based on ValueError.