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45.2. Reporting Errors Within the Server

Error, warning, and log messages generated within the server code should be created using ereport, or its older cousin elog. The use of this function is complex enough to require some explanation.

There are two required elements for every message: a severity level (ranging from DEBUG to PANIC) and a primary message text. In addition there are optional elements, the most common of which is an error identifier code that follows the SQL spec's SQLSTATE conventions. ereport itself is just a shell function, that exists mainly for the syntactic convenience of making message generation look like a function call in the C source code. The only parameter accepted directly by ereport is the severity level. The primary message text and any optional message elements are generated by calling auxiliary functions, such as errmsg, within the ereport call.

A typical call to ereport might look like this:

ereport(ERROR,
        (errcode(ERRCODE_DIVISION_BY_ZERO),
         errmsg("division by zero")));

This specifies error severity level ERROR (a run-of-the-mill error). The errcode call specifies the SQLSTATE error code using a macro defined in src/include/utils/errcodes.h. The errmsg call provides the primary message text. Notice the extra set of parentheses surrounding the auxiliary function calls — these are annoying but syntactically necessary.

Here is a more complex example:

ereport(ERROR,
        (errcode(ERRCODE_AMBIGUOUS_FUNCTION),
         errmsg("function %s is not unique",
                func_signature_string(funcname, nargs,
                                      actual_arg_types)),
         errhint("Unable to choose a best candidate function. "
                 "You may need to add explicit typecasts.")));

This illustrates the use of format codes to embed run-time values into a message text. Also, an optional "hint" message is provided.

The available auxiliary routines for ereport are:

There is an older function elog that is still heavily used. An elog call

elog(level, "format string", ...);

is exactly equivalent to

ereport(level, (errmsg_internal("format string", ...)));

Notice that the SQLSTATE error code is always defaulted, and the message string is not included in the internationalization message dictionary. Therefore, elog should be used only for internal errors and low-level debug logging. Any message that is likely to be of interest to ordinary users should go through ereport. Nonetheless, there are enough internal "can't happen" error checks in the system that elog is still widely used; it is preferred for those messages for its notational simplicity.

Advice about writing good error messages can be found in Section 45.3.

Notes

[1]

That is, the value that was current when the ereport call was reached; changes of errno within the auxiliary reporting routines will not affect it. That would not be true if you were to write strerror(errno) explicitly in errmsg's parameter list; accordingly, do not do so.


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