Re: RFC - making the Exception class abstract

Kevin, On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 4:41 PM, Kevin Bradwick <kevinbradwick@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello! > > This is my first post to the internals list so please forgive me if I have > not followed the rules precisely! > > I've had an idea to improve how developers use exceptions within PHP. I'd > like to add an RFC but as per the instructions on the site > <https://wiki.php.net/rfc/howto>, I am sending this email > first gauge > reaction as an initial idea. > > The idea is to change the base Exception > <http://php.net/manual/en/class.exception.php> class to > be abstract. The > reason for this is to encourage developers to extend it to create meaning > exceptions or use the standard SPL exceptions. The documentation states > that it's the base class for all exceptions, which kind of encourages my > thought process. > > Too many times have I seen developers throwing Exceptions when what they > really needed was something that gave it context like > InvalidArgumentException or RuntimeException. Yes, I agree this is > something to tackle at code review (and I do) but I feel PHP doesn't help > the situation by making it an instantiatable class. I struggle to think of > a valid reason where it makes sense to throw the root Exception class. > Catching the root Exception class is a different matter and there are > perfectly valid cases for doing it. > > So, what does everyone think? Is it worth me pursing the RFC with full > details of the idea or am I on my own with this one? > > Many thanks! > Kevin Changing the existing Exception class to be abstract would break a metric ton of code. Simply on that metric alone it would be a hard sell. I think you'd need an exceptionally strong justification for it, beyond "using typed exceptions is better". Instead, I think we should solve the problem with education. Perhaps the documentation can better detail out why devs shouldn't directly throw exception but instead use typed exceptions...? My $0.02 at least... Anthony