Re: Proper error handling with DB_DataObject

probably in hindsight, more of the methods would return PEAR_Error, but unfortunatly it would break BC soo badly now, that I've not considered changing it. I'd probably use !empty() to test for error conditions, and unset() to clear it.. Regards Alan Markus Fischer wrote:

Alan Knowles wrote:

|From the comments in the source /** * Theses are the standard error codes, most methods will fail silently - and return false * to access the error message either use $table->_lastError * or $last_error = PEAR::getStaticProperty('DB_DataObject','lastError'); * the code is $last_error->code, and the message is $last_error->message (a standard PEAR error) */ This does deserve a bug report noting missing documentation though..

I will do :) So the real way is to either do if (strlen($DO->_lastError) > 0) { or if (PEAR::isError( $last_error = PEAR::getStaticProperty('DB_DataObject','lastError'))) { and if I want to further work with the$DO I have to set the _lastError to an emptry string and clear the static property.

If you need to expect errors - make sure you clear the _lastError value before calling the thing you know that might fail. - most methods should return false if they fail, otherwise it's probably a bug....

This this 'clearing' also affect the getStaticProperty call? How would I clear it? Just setting it with 'NULL' I don't want to challenge any architectical decisions about DB_DataObject (I think DO is superior to most other things out there) but the proper handling of error situations is very wierd in DO compared to other projects ... I mean, yes it makes do some degree sense to always return the value of a method regardless of an error, but for fine graned error handling it's also much easier to return a PEAR_Error for example. thanks, - Markus