You can define your own exception class for your application specific purposes. The exception class is created by extending the java.lang.Exception class for checked exception or java.lang.RuntimeException for unchecked exception. By creating your own Exception classes, you could identify the problem more precisely.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class CustomExceptionExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int x = 1, y = 0;

        try {
            int z = CustomExceptionExample.divide(x, y);
            System.out.println("z = " + z);
        } catch (DivideByZeroException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static int divide(int x, int y) throws DivideByZeroException {
        try {
            return (x / y);
        } catch (ArithmeticException e) {
            String m = x + " / " + y + ", trying to divide by zero";
            throw new DivideByZeroException(m, e);
        }
    }
}

package org.kodejava.basic;

class DivideByZeroException extends Exception {
    DivideByZeroException() {
        super();
    }

    DivideByZeroException(String message) {
        super(message);
    }

    DivideByZeroException(String message, Throwable cause) {
        super(message, cause);
    }
}

The exceptions that you catch in a try-catch block must have been raised by a method that you’ve called. You can raise an exception with a statement that consists of the throw keyword, followed by an exception object. This exception object is an instance of any subclass of the Throwable class.

In the example below we have two static methods that throws exception. The first method, throwException() will throw an ArithmethicException when the divider is a zero value integer. The second method, printDate(Date date) will throw a NullPointerException if the date parameter value is null.

package org.kodejava.basic;

import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

public class ThrowExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            ThrowExample.throwException();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        try {
            ThrowExample.printDate(null);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static void throwException() {
        int x = 6;
        int[] numbers = {3, 2, 1, 0};

        for (int y : numbers) {
            if (y == 0) {
                // Throws an ArithmeticException when about to
                // divide by zero.
                String message = String.format(
                        "x = %d; y = %d; a division by zero.",
                        x, y);
                throw new ArithmeticException(message);
            } else {
                int z = x / y;
                System.out.println("z = " + z);
            }
        }
    }

    public static void printDate(Date date) {
        if (date == null) {
            throw new NullPointerException("Date cannot be null.");
        }
        DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
        System.out.println("Date: " + df.format(date));
    }
}

The output of our code:

z = 2
z = 3
z = 6
java.lang.ArithmeticException: x = 6; y = 0; a division by zero.
    at org.kodejava.basic.ThrowExample.throwException(ThrowExample.java:33)
    at org.kodejava.basic.ThrowExample.main(ThrowExample.java:10)
java.lang.NullPointerException: Date cannot be null.
    at org.kodejava.basic.ThrowExample.printDate(ThrowExample.java:43)
    at org.kodejava.basic.ThrowExample.main(ThrowExample.java:16)

If a try block can throw several kind of exceptions, and you want to handle each exception differently, you can put several catch blocks to handle it.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class MultipleCatchExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int[] numbers1 = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
        int[] numbers2 = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6};

        try {
            // This line throws an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException
            MultipleCatchExample.printResult(numbers1);

            // This line throws an ArithmeticException
            MultipleCatchExample.printResult(numbers2);
        } catch (ArithmeticException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            System.out.println("Finally block is always executed.");
        }
    }

    /**
     * Divide the given first number by the second number.
     *
     * @param x the first number.
     * @param y the second number.
     * @return the result of division.
     */
    private static int divide(int x, int y) {
        return x / y;
    }

    /**
     * Print the output result of divide operation by calling the
     * divide() method.
     *
     * @param numbers integer arrays of the divided number
     * @throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException when an exception
     *                                        occurs.
     */
    private static void printResult(int[] numbers) {
        int x, z, y = 1;
        for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
            x = numbers[i];
            if (i == 5) {
                y = 0;
            }
            z = MultipleCatchExample.divide(x, y);
            System.out.println("z = " + z);
        }
    }
}