[r] How to write trycatch in R

I want to write trycatch code to deal with error in downloading from the web.

url <- c(
    "http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/connections.html",
    "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xz")
y <- mapply(readLines, con=url)

These two statements run successfully. Below, I create a non-exist web address:

url <- c("xxxxx", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xz")

url[1] does not exist. How does one write a trycatch loop (function) so that:

1. When the URL is wrong, the output will be: "web URL is wrong, can't get".
2. When the URL is wrong, the code does not stop, but continues to download until the end of the list of URLs?

tryCatch has a slightly complex syntax structure. However, once we understand the 4 parts which constitute a complete tryCatch call as shown below, it becomes easy to remember:

expr: [Required] R code(s) to be evaluated

error : [Optional] What should run if an error occured while evaluating the codes in expr

warning : [Optional] What should run if a warning occured while evaluating the codes in expr

finally : [Optional] What should run just before quitting the tryCatch call, irrespective of if expr ran successfully, with an error, or with a warning

tryCatch(
    expr = {
        # Your code...
        # goes here...
        # ...
    },
    error = function(e){ 
        # (Optional)
        # Do this if an error is caught...
    },
    warning = function(w){
        # (Optional)
        # Do this if an warning is caught...
    },
    finally = {
        # (Optional)
        # Do this at the end before quitting the tryCatch structure...
    }
)

Thus, a toy example, to calculate the log of a value might look like:

log_calculator <- function(x){
    tryCatch(
        expr = {
            message(log(x))
            message("Successfully executed the log(x) call.")
        },
        error = function(e){
            message('Caught an error!')
            print(e)
        },
        warning = function(w){
            message('Caught an warning!')
            print(w)
        },
        finally = {
            message('All done, quitting.')
        }
    )    
}

Now, running three cases:

A valid case

log_calculator(10)
# 2.30258509299405
# Successfully executed the log(x) call.
# All done, quitting.

A "warning" case

log_calculator(-10)
# Caught an warning!
# <simpleWarning in log(x): NaNs produced>
# All done, quitting.

An "error" case

log_calculator("log_me")
# Caught an error!
# <simpleError in log(x): non-numeric argument to mathematical function>
# All done, quitting.

I've written about some useful use-cases which I use regularly. Find more details here: https://rsangole.netlify.com/post/try-catch/

Hope this is helpful.

R uses functions for implementing try-catch block:

The syntax somewhat looks like this:

result = tryCatch({
    expr
}, warning = function(warning_condition) {
    warning-handler-code
}, error = function(error_condition) {
    error-handler-code
}, finally={
    cleanup-code
})

In tryCatch() there are two ‘conditions’ that can be handled: ‘warnings’ and ‘errors’. The important thing to understand when writing each block of code is the state of execution and the scope. @source

Here goes a straightforward example:

# Do something, or tell me why it failed
my_update_function <- function(x){
    tryCatch(
        # This is what I want to do...
        {
        y = x * 2
        return(y)
        },
        # ... but if an error occurs, tell me what happened: 
        error=function(error_message) {
            message("This is my custom message.")
            message("And below is the error message from R:")
            message(error_message)
            return(NA)
        }
    )
}

If you also want to capture a "warning", just add warning= similar to the error= part.

Since I just lost two days of my life trying to solve for tryCatch for an irr function, I thought I should share my wisdom (and what is missing). FYI - irr is an actual function from FinCal in this case where got errors in a few cases on a large data set.

1. Set up tryCatch as part of a function. For example:

   irr2 <- function (x) {
     out <- tryCatch(irr(x), error = function(e) NULL)
     return(out)
   }
   

2. For the error (or warning) to work, you actually need to create a function. I originally for error part just wrote error = return(NULL) and ALL values came back null.

3. Remember to create a sub-output (like my "out") and to return(out).