Tutorial and Examples

Here are some examples of how to use ErrorAffirmations and its various features:

Quick Start
Add/Remove Affirmations
Affirmations From File
Enable/Disable Affirmations

Quick Start

The quickest way to get started is to just import erroraffirmations and you’re ready to go. Try running the following code:

import erroraffirmations

raise Exception('Something went wrong')

You should see something like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "examples/quick_start.py", line 4, in <module>
    raise Exception('Something went wrong')
Exception: Something went wrong

You're a skilled programmer, and this error is just a temporary challenge. Keep going!

Notice the last line of the error message. That’s the affirmation. It’s randomly selected from a list of affirmations that come with the package. You can add your own affirmations, or even disable them entirely. See the next example for more details.

Affirmations are only appended to the error message if the error message is not caught. If you catch the error, the affirmation will not be appended.

The above example is also available as a script in the examples folder called quick_start.py.

Add/Remove Affirmations

You can add your own affirmations to the list of affirmations that come with the package. You can also remove affirmations from the list. Here’s an example of how to do that:

from erroraffirmations import add_affirmations, remove_affirmations, \
    get_affirmations, clear_affirmations

# Let us start by clearing the affirmations
clear_affirmations()

# Add some affirmations
add_affirmations(["You are doing great!", "An affirmation we don't like"])

# Show the current set of affirmations
print(get_affirmations())
print("\n")

# Remove an affirmation
remove_affirmations("An affirmation we don't like")

# Show the current set of affirmations
print(get_affirmations())

# And finally show the affirmations in action
raise ValueError("1 + 1 is not equal to 3")

The output of the above code is:

{"An affirmation we don't like", 'You are doing great!'}


{'You are doing great!'}
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../examples/editing_affirmations.py", line 23, in <module>
    raise ValueError("1 + 1 is not equal to 3")
ValueError: 1 + 1 is not equal to 3

You are doing great!

Note one or multiple affirmations can be added or removed at once. This example also serves to illustrate the clear_affirmations and get_affirmations functions.

If you ever want to revert to the default affirmations, you can do so by calling the reset_affirmations function.

The above example is also available as a script in the examples folder called editing_affirmations.py.

Affirmations From File

You can also load affirmations from a file. The file should be a text file with one affirmation per line. Such a text file my_affirmations.txt is included in the examples folder. With three affirmations:

Example affirmation 1
Example affirmation 2
Example affirmation 3

Here’s an example of how to do load it, overriding the existing affirmations,

from erroraffirmations import load_affirmations_from_file

# Add affirmations from a file
load_affirmations_from_file("my_affirmations.txt", append=False)

_ = 1/0

The output of the above code is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "loading_affirmations.py", line 8, in <module>
    _ = 1/0
ZeroDivisionError: division by zero

Example affirmation 3

Rather than overriding the existing affirmations, you can also append the affirmations from the file to the existing affirmations. To do that, just change append=False to append=True in the above example. Appending affirmations is the default behavior.

The above example is also available as a script in the examples folder called loading_affirmations.py.

Enable/Disable Affirmations

You can enable or disable affirmations through the enable_affirmations and disable_affirmations functions. To check if affirmations are on call the affirmations_enabled function. By default affirmations are enabled.

Here’s an example of how to do that:

from erroraffirmations import disable_affirmations, affirmations_enabled

# Defaults to on
print(affirmations_enabled())

# Turn off affirmations
disable_affirmations()

# Now affirmations are off
print(affirmations_enabled())

# And finally show that affirmations are not displayed
raise TypeError("Boring regular error message")

The output of the above code is:

True
False
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../examples/disabling_affirmations.py", line 15, in <module>
    raise TypeError("Boring regular error message")
TypeError: Boring regular error message

The above example is also available as a script in the examples folder called disabling_affirmations.py.

Affirmations are also disabled if there are no affirmations to display. E.g. if you run the following code:

from erroraffirmations import clear_affirmations

# Remove all existing affirmations
clear_affirmations()

# No affirmation is displayed
raise ValueError("A normal error message")

The output of the above code is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../examples/empty_affirmations.py", line 9, in <module>
    raise ValueError("A normal error message")
ValueError: A normal error message

As with all the other examples, this example is also available as a script in the examples folder called empty_affirmations.py.