Rewriting Try + Catch{System.Assert(false, 'blahblah')} for easy toggle-off of catch?

Question

Dear Salesforce StackExchange,

An outside partner set a precedent in some of our Apex triggers of doing major operations (such as DML) inside a try/catch block, and having the catch block simply contain a System.Assert(false, 'Blah blah blah failed'); statement inside it.

I like this because something feels right about not propagating deep stack traces up to a user in production code. Like teaching your kids to say you're busy, rather than not home, when they answer the phone to a stranger.

That said, if I get an error with production data and want to see what lies below the 'Blah blah blah failed' message, it's a royal pain to wait 20 minutes for validation tests to pass so I can replace the try-catch with a simple call to whatever was in the try block (to allow deeper errors to bubble up to me).

Does anyone have any efficient, secure, portable suggestions to improve this kind of code so I can simply "flip a switch" in the org and let the code know, "Someone's looking deeply at errors - let them bubble up"?

Specifically ... where in the Salesforce org would you recommend I put the "switch?"

Answer 1

Take a look at An Introduction to Exception Handling.

For the record, I think there are better approaches to error handling than hiding the root cause. Personally, I would rather see Duplicate Value or Close Date must be in the future instead of Something went wrong.

If you want to maintain the existing pattern, you should use the SObject.addError method. Using system.assert(false) means that every dml operation is all or none, making it impossible to retain partially successful saves.

You can use a Hierarchy Custom Setting to toggle this behavior, with the advantage that you have granular control at the Profile or even User level. For example you can just make it so Hide DML is always false for System Administrators.

if (ExceptionHandling__c.getOrgDefaults().Hide_Dml__c)
{
    insert newRecords;
}
else
{
    insertAndHideExceptions(newRecords);
}

With the masking method looking something like:

try
{
    insert newRecords;
}
catch (DmlException dmx)
{
    for (Integer i = 0; i < dmx.getNumDml(); i++)
    {
        Integer index = dmx.getDmlIndex(i);
        newRecords[index].addError(SOME_GENERIC_MESSAGE);
    }
}