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Direct2D Error Handling Policies

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This topic describes the Direct2D error handling policies. It contains the following sections.

Use of HRESULT

If a function is not batched and can have a run-time failure, it should return HRESULT to indicate a failure. A run-time failure is any failure that cannot be avoided at design time, such as out of memory.

Return Value of Batched Functions

Batched functions in Direct2D are the functions that are processed as a single unit when EndDraw or Close is called. They are the drawing commands between BeginDraw and EndDraw or commands on GeometrySink. For these functions, errors are reported at the time the batch is completed. The error is returned after EndDraw for drawing commands, and after Close for GeometrySink.

RenderTargets stop drawing if an error state is set, but an application can call Flush to reset the error state and resume drawing.

Get and Set functions have no return value. However, if a Set function has an invalid input, the debug layer generates a message. In this case, no error state is set and the Set function does nothing.

Invalid Input

Direct2D dereferences output pointers and required parameters which result in access violations when the pointers are invalid or NULL.

Output Pointer

Direct2D dereferences an output pointer and assigns it to NULL immediately upon entering the function. This causes an access violation if a caller passes in NULL as the pointer to the return value. This policy also applies to arrays of pointers. For other output parameters, such as a struct, the dereference happens later and also results in an access violation. However, there are some methods that have optional output pointers (that is, EndDraw, Flush) that will not cause an access violation.

Required Parameter

If NULL is passed to any function requiring a valid value, the function dereferences the bad pointer early resulting in an access violation. For optional input parameters, NULL is a valid value that results in some reasonable default.

NaN and Poorly Ordered Input RECTs

In Direct2D, NaN is considered a valid input and poorly ordered input RECTs are sorted.

NaN as Input

NaN is considered a valid input, though it typically results in the primitive that contains the NaN not drawing. The Direct2D API does not provide explicit filtering of NaN to validate input.

Poorly Ordered Input RECTs

Poorly ordered input RECTs are sorted so that the top, left and bottom, right corners are correctly specified. For output, empty rectangles look like this: {Infinity, Infinity, FloatMax, FloatMax}.