Why did my program crash?

I wanted a simple answer and would love something similar to a stack trace. I tried some popular crates and found that they are either too complex or too much work to use. If the error is application-ending, I just want to pass it up the stack and eventually either print or serialize it. And that's exactly what this library does, while remaining as small as possible.

It implements a single type [ErrorMessage] and a single trait [WithContext], which is implemented for [Result] and [Option]. It provides two functions:

• with_err_context which takes anything that can be converted to [&str]
• with_dyn_err_context which instead takes a closure that is only run in the error case

No macros and no learning curve. Wherever you use Rust's [?] operator, you now add .with_err_context("Short description of what you are currently doing")?.

The output is neatly formatted, almost like a stacktrace.

A simple example

use errors_with_context::prelude::*;
// OR just use WithContext
use errors_with_context::WithContext;

fn read_file(path: &str) -> Result<File, io::Error> {
   Err(io::Error::from(ErrorKind::UnexpectedEof))
}

fn load_config() -> Result<Config, ErrorMessage> {
    // [...]
    let config_path = "config.json";
    read_file(config_path)
        .with_dyn_err_context(|| format!("Failed to read file '{}'", config_path))?;
    // [...]
}

fn init_program() -> Result<(), ErrorMessage> {
    load_config()
        .with_err_context("Failed to load configuration")?;
    // [...]
}

fn main() -> Result<(), ErrorMessage> {
    init_program()
        .with_err_context("Failed to start the program")?;
    // [...]
}

prints

Failed to start the program
  caused by: Failed to load configuration
  caused by: Failed to read file 'config.json'
  caused by: Kind(UnexpectedEof)

Using ErrorMessages

You can use the functions with_err_context and with_dyn_err_context with Results and Options.

with_err_context

If your error messages are static strings, you can just include them like this:

use errors_with_context::WithContext;
fn produce_err() -> Result<(), io::Error> { Err(io::ErrorKind::UnexpectedEof.into())}
fn produce_none() -> Option<()> { None }

produce_err()
    .with_err_context("Something went wrong in function 'produce_err'");
produce_none()
    .with_err_context("Something went wrong in function 'produce_none'");

prints

Something went wrong in function 'produce_err'
 caused by: Kind(UnexpectedEof)

and

Something went wrong in function 'produce_none'

with_dyn_err_context

use errors_with_context::prelude::*;
fn produce_err() -> Result<(), io::Error> { Err(io::ErrorKind::UnexpectedEof.into())}
fn produce_none() -> Option<()> { None }

let variable = "Test";

produce_err()
    .with_dyn_err_context(|| format!("Something went wrong in function 'produce_err'. Extra info: {variable}"));

produce_none()
    .with_dyn_err_context(|| format!("Something went wrong in function 'produce_none'. Extra info: {variable}"));

prints

Something went wrong in function 'produce_err'. Extra info: Test
 caused by: Kind(UnexpectedEof)

and

Something went wrong in function 'produce_none'. Extra info: Test

Creating an error message from scratch

To get an [ErrorMessage] without an underlying Error

use errors_with_context::ErrorMessage;
ErrorMessage::new("Error description");
// prints "Error description" without listing a cause

Most of the time, you need a Result<T, ErrorMessage> instead. ErrorMessage::err does exactly that, so you can immediately throw it with ?:

fn erroring_function() -> Result<String, ErrorMessage> {
    ErrorMessage::err("Error description")?
}

If you want to manually wrap an Error, there is the function ErrorMessage::with_context. Example:

ErrorMessage::with_context("Error description", io::Error::last_os_error());

A real-world example

fn main() -> Result<(), ErrorMessage> {
let outputs = get_outputs()
        .with_err_context("Failed to get outputs")?;
}

fn get_outputs() -> Result<Outputs, ErrorMessage> {
let cmd = "swaynsg"; // <-- misspelled "swaymsg" command will cause an error
    let args = ["-t", "get_outputs"];
    let process_output = run(cmd, &args)
        .with_dyn_err_context(|| format!("Failed to run command '{cmd}' with args {args:?}"))?;
    let outputs = parse_json(&process_output)
        .with_err_context("Failed to parse swaymsg outputs JSON")?;
}

fn run<I, S>(cmd: &str, args: I) -> Result<String, ErrorMessage>
where
    I: IntoIterator<Item=S>,
    S: AsRef<OsStr>,
{
let child = Command::new(cmd)
        .args(args)
        .stdin(Stdio::null())
        .stdout(Stdio::piped())
        .stderr(Stdio::piped())
        .spawn()
        .with_err_context("Failed to spawn process")?;
    let mut stdout = child.stdout.with_err_context("Failed to get stdout from process")?;
    let mut output = String::new();
    stdout.read_to_string(&mut output).with_err_context("Failed to read stdout into buffer")?;
    Ok(output)
}

prints

Error: Failed to get outputs
  caused by: Failed to run command 'swaynsg' with args ["-t", "get_outputs"]
  caused by: Failed to spawn process
  caused by: Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" }

Much nicer to understand what the program was doing :)

If you had just used the ? operator everywhere, the error would have just said:

Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" }

Features

Feature	Enabled by default	Dependencies	Effect
default	true	feature: "pretty_debug_errors"	Enable pretty debug errors
pretty_debug_errors	true		Enable pretty debug errors
boolean_errors	false		Allow turning booleans into ErrorMessages
serde	false	dependency: "serde"	Allow serialization of ErrorMessages

Feature: pretty_debug_errors

This feature is enabled by default and is responsible for the pretty error messages in the rest of this page. If the feature is disabled, the more ideomatic rust debug error formatting is used:

 Error: ErrorMessage { message: "Failed to get outputs", cause: ErrorMessage { message: "Failed to run command 'swaynsg' with args [\"-t\", \"get_outputs\"]", cause: ErrorMessage { message: "Failed to spawn process", cause: Some(Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" }) } } }

Formatted by hand, it looks like this:

Error: ErrorMessage {
    message: "Failed to get outputs",
    cause: ErrorMessage {
        message: "Failed to run command 'swaynsg' with args [\"-t\", \"get_outputs\"]",
        cause: ErrorMessage {
            message: "Failed to spawn process",
            cause: Some(
                Os {
                    code: 2,
                    kind: NotFound,
                    message: "No such file or directory"
                }
            )
        }
    }
}

Still readable, but not as nice for humans.

Feature: boolean_errors

(disabled by default)

This adds the trait [BooleanErrors] and with it 4 functions to the [bool] type:

• error_if_true
• error_if_false
• error_dyn_if_true
• error_dyn_if_false

This allows for cool code like this:

use errors_with_context::{BooleanErrors, ErrorMessage};
let path = Path::new("test.file");
path.exists()
    .error_if_false("Expected file to exist!")?;

or with more dynamic context:

use errors_with_context::prelude::*;
let path = Path::new("test.file");
path.exists()
    .error_dyn_if_false(|| format!("Expected file '{}' to exist!", path.display()))?;

Very useful, when doing lots of checks that aren't immediately errors.

Feature: serde

(disabled by default)

This feature enables serialization of [ErrorMessage]s with serde.

let result: Result<Infallible, _> = Err(io::Error::from(io::ErrorKind::NotFound))
.with_err_context("Failed to read file")
.with_err_context("Failed to load configuration")
.with_err_context("Failed to start the program");
let message = result.unwrap_err();
let json = serde_json::to_string_pretty(&message).unwrap();

results in

{
  "message": "Failed to start the program",
  "cause": {
    "message": "Failed to load configuration",
    "cause": {
      "message": "Failed to read file",
      "cause": {
        "message": "entity not found",
        "cause": null
      }
    }
  }
}