Bypassing APIExceptions completely

[deepaks829]

I would like to understand the implications of the following design choice for an application built using DRF.

Is it okay if I choose to raise exceptions that are not APIExceptions in conjunction with a custom_exception_handler?

From what I understand, the handler for a specific request is determined within the rest_framework.views.APIView.dispatch method and the handler gets called within the try...catch.. block in this dispatch method. So this way any exceptions that are raised during the execution of the handler are caught within the dispatch method are delegated to the exception handler (default or custom). As we can see here the dispatch method catches not an APIException but any and all Exception.

So could I simply raise my own CustomException through out my application and simply handle all these exceptions the way I want in the custom_exception_handler?

I understand that the ValidationError will be an exception to this, as the serializers and in-built validators all raise ValidationError. If I can override the rest_framework.serializers.Serializer.is_valid in MyCustomSerializer I can catch the rest_Framework.serializers.ValidationError and throw MyOwnCustomValidationError which can be handled by the custom_exception_handler

What foreseeable design or maintenance problems does anyone see in this, if any? For example, if a new APIException is introduced into a future version of the framework and if that is not handled by my custom_exception_handler then that could be a problem. However, once discovered handling that should be pretty straight forward.

Thank you for any insights into this design choice.