Go Academy · Lesson

Creating Custom Errors

errors.New, fmt.Errorf, and sentinel errors

Why Custom Error Types?

Custom error types carry structured data beyond a string message, enabling callers to inspect and react to specific error conditions:

package main
import "fmt"

// Custom error type carries extra context
type HTTPError struct {
    StatusCode int
    Message    string
}

func (e *HTTPError) Error() string {
    return fmt.Sprintf("HTTP %d: %s", e.StatusCode, e.Message)
}

func fetch(url string) error {
    return &HTTPError{404, "page not found"}
}

func main() {
    err := fetch("http://example.com")
    fmt.Println(err) // HTTP 404: page not found
}

Implementing the error Interface

Any type with an Error() string method satisfies error:

package main
import "fmt"

type ValidationError struct {
    Field   string
    Value   interface{}
    Message string
}

func (e *ValidationError) Error() string {
    return fmt.Sprintf("validation: field %q value %v — %s", e.Field, e.Value, e.Message)
}

func validateAge(age int) error {
    if age < 0 || age > 150 {
        return &ValidationError{"age", age, "must be between 0 and 150"}
    }
    return nil
}

func main() {
    fmt.Println(validateAge(-5))
}

All lessons in this course

← Back to Go Academy