Generator.prototype.throw()

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2016.

The throw() method of Generator instances acts as if a throw statement is inserted in the generator's body at the current suspended position, which informs the generator of an error condition and allows it to handle the error, or perform cleanup and close itself.

Syntax

js
generatorInstance.throw(exception)

Parameters

exception

The exception to throw. For debugging purposes, it is useful to make it an instanceof Error.

Return value

If the thrown exception is caught by a try...catch and the generator resumes to yield more values, it will return an Object with two properties:

done

A boolean value:

  • true if the generator function's control flow has reached the end.
  • false if the generator function is able to produce more values.
value

The value yielded from the next yield expression.

Exceptions

If the thrown exception is not caught by a try...catch, the exception passed to throw() will be thrown out from the generator function.

Description

The throw() method, when called, can be seen as if a throw exception; statement is inserted in the generator's body at the current suspended position, where exception is the exception passed to the throw() method. Therefore, in a typical flow, calling throw(exception) will cause the generator to throw. However, if the yield expression is wrapped in a try...catch block, the error may be caught and control flow can either resume after error handling, or exit gracefully.

Examples

Using throw()

The following example shows a simple generator and an error that is thrown using the throw method. An error can be caught by a try...catch block as usual.

js
function* gen() {
  while (true) {
    try {
      yield 42;
    } catch (e) {
      console.log("Error caught!");
    }
  }
}

const g = gen();
g.next();
// { value: 42, done: false }
g.throw(new Error("Something went wrong"));
// "Error caught!"
// { value: 42, done: false }

Specifications

Specification
ECMAScript Language Specification
# sec-generator.prototype.throw

Browser compatibility

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See also