[libvirt-users] Is this Race Condition?

Hi, everyone I'm writing application using libvirt and I need call virDomainGetCPUStats to get domain cpu stats . I learn from API reference that this function has to be called when domain is running. So my question is if there is an atomic way to test the domain's state and get its stats? Or, it's ok to call this function when domain is not active, but caller just gets error returned. In my code, I just call it directly and return error. I wonder if this programming practice has subtle problem like race condition.