Surprising behavior of Java 8 CompletableFuture exceptionally method

exception java-8 completable-future
Lukas picture Lukas · Dec 11, 2014 · Viewed 43.3k times · Source

I have encountered strange behavior of Java 8 CompletableFuture.exceptionally method. If I execute this code, it works fine and prints java.lang.RuntimeException

CompletableFuture<String> future = new CompletableFuture<>();

future.completeExceptionally(new RuntimeException());

future.exceptionally(e -> {
            System.out.println(e.getClass());
            return null;
});

But if I add another step in the future processing like thenApply, the exception type changes to java.util.concurrent.CompletionException with the original exception wrapped inside.

CompletableFuture<String> future = new CompletableFuture<>();

future.completeExceptionally(new RuntimeException());

future.thenApply(v-> v).exceptionally(e -> {
            System.out.println(e);
            return null;
});

Is there any reason why this should be happening? In my opinion, it's quite surprising.

Answer

Holger picture Holger · Dec 11, 2014

This behavior is specified in the class documentation of CompletionStage (fourth bullet):

Method handle additionally allows the stage to compute a replacement result that may enable further processing by other dependent stages. In all other cases, if a stage's computation terminates abruptly with an (unchecked) exception or error, then all dependent stages requiring its completion complete exceptionally as well, with a CompletionException holding the exception as its cause.

It’s not that surprising if you consider that you may want to know whether the stage you have invoked exceptionally on failed, or one of its direct or indirect prerequisites.

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