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Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 01:06:01 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] ReflectionClass::getMethod()
From: thekid@thekid.de (Timm Friebe)

On Wed, 2004-12-22 at 14:28 -0800, Andi Gutmans wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It seems that in the past few months ReflectionClass::getMethod() was 
> changed to throw an Exception if the method doesn't exist.

-- snip --
revision 1.113
date: 2004/07/19 19:14:10;  author: sebastian;  state: Exp;  lines: +9
-5
Make ReflectionClass::getMethod() and ReflectionClass::getProperty()
raise an ReflectionException instead of returning NULL on failure.
-- snip --

> I don't understand the reasoning because as it's a reflection API I 
> would expect it to return false

NULL would be better, IMO, but nevertheless.

> and not an exception. Exceptions should be thrown for errors. As long
> as we don't have hasMethod() then I think this behavior is wrong.

Agreed.

> Can anyone shed some light on this? Why was this changed? Marcus?

Ask Sebastian:)

I think what Sebastian wanted to do is:

  $reflectionClass->getMethod('abc')->invoke($object);

...and not have this bail with a fatal error when getMethod() returns
NULL, but raise an exception. Fine. I still think NULL->method() should
throw a NullPointerError instead of bailing but I also agree with Andi
that as long as there is no hasMethod() throwing an exception is
unacceptable.

-- 
Timm
If it ain't broken, it doesn't have enough features yet