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Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 08:47:29 +0100
Reply-To: Marcus Boerger <helly@php.net>
Message-ID: <1747956759.20041223084729@marcus-boerger.de>
To: Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com>,
	Sebastian Bergmann <sb@sebastian-bergmann.de>,
	Timm Friebe <thekid@thekid.de>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] ReflectionClass::getMethod()
From: helly@php.net (Marcus Boerger)

Hello Timm,

Thursday, December 23, 2004, 1:06:01 AM, you wrote:

> 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.

While i think using exceptions consistently everywhere in Reflection API
is a good idea i also think we should have hasMethod() in either way.

Best regards,
 Marcus                            mailto:helly@php.net