Which exception should I raise on bad/illegal argument combinations in Python?

Question

I was wondering about the best practices for indicating invalid argument combinations in Python. I've come across a few situations where you have a function like so:

def import_to_orm(name, save=False, recurse=False):

"""

:param name: Name of some external entity to import.

:param save: Save the ORM object before returning.

:param recurse: Attempt to import associated objects as well. Because you need the original object to have a key to relate to, save must be `True` for recurse to be `True`.

:raise BadValueError: If `recurse and not save`.

:return: The ORM object.

"""

pass

The only annoyance with this is that every package has its own, usually slightly differing BadValueError. I know that in Java there exists java.lang.IllegalArgumentException -- is it well understood that everybody will be creating their own BadValueErrors in Python or is there another, preferred method?

Answer 1

It would be better to raise ValueError unless you need a more specific exception below is the code that explains how we will:-

def import_to_orm(name, save=False, recurse=False):

         if recurse and not save:

                raise ValueError("save must be True if recurse is True")