Domain Error Strategy

Layer 2: Design Choices

Core Question

Who needs to handle this error, and how should they recover?

Before designing error types:

• Is this user-facing or internal?
• Is recovery possible?
• What context is needed for debugging?

Error Categorization

Thinking Prompt

Before designing error types:

1. Who sees this error?
   • End user → friendly message, actionable
   • Developer → detailed, debuggable
   • Ops → structured, alertable
2. Can we recover?
   • Transient → retry with backoff
   • Degradable → fallback value
   • Permanent → fail fast, alert
3. What context is needed?
   • Call chain → anyhow::Context
   • Request ID → structured logging
   • Input data → error payload

Trace Up ↑

To domain constraints (Layer 3):

"How should I handle payment failures?"
    ↑ Ask: What are the business rules for retries?
    ↑ Check: domain-fintech (transaction requirements)
    ↑ Check: SLA (availability requirements)

Trace Down ↓

To implementation (Layer 1):

"Need typed errors"
    ↓ m06-error-handling: thiserror for library
    ↓ m04-zero-cost: Error enum design

"Need error context"
    ↓ m06-error-handling: anyhow::Context
    ↓ Logging: tracing with fields

"Need retry logic"
    ↓ m07-concurrency: async retry patterns
    ↓ Crates: tokio-retry, backoff

Quick Reference

Error Hierarchy

#[derive(thiserror::Error, Debug)]
pub enum AppError {
    // User-facing
    #[error("Invalid input: {0}")]
    Validation(String),

    // Transient (retryable)
    #[error("Service temporarily unavailable")]
    ServiceUnavailable(#[source] reqwest::Error),

    // Internal (log details, show generic)
    #[error("Internal error")]
    Internal(#[source] anyhow::Error),
}

impl AppError {
    pub fn is_retryable(&self) -> bool {
        matches!(self, Self::ServiceUnavailable(_))
    }
}

Retry Pattern

use tokio_retry::{Retry, strategy::ExponentialBackoff};

async fn with_retry<F, T, E>(f: F) -> Result<T, E>
where
    F: Fn() -> impl Future<Output = Result<T, E>>,
    E: std::fmt::Debug,
{
    let strategy = ExponentialBackoff::from_millis(100)
        .max_delay(Duration::from_secs(10))
        .take(5);

    Retry::spawn(strategy, || f()).await
}

Common Mistakes

Anti-Patterns

Related Skills