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Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 09:09:23 +0200
Reply-To: "ilya77@gmail.com" <ilya77@gmail.com>
To: Christian Schneider <cschneid@cschneid.com>
Cc: Sebastian Bergmann <sb@sebastian-bergmann.de>, internals@lists.php.net
In-Reply-To: <41CC562E.6090005@cschneid.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] ReflectionClass::getMethod()
From: ilya77@gmail.com ("ilya77@gmail.com")

Why not just returning null when a method does not exist?
Actually CALLING a non-existing method should be treated as an error...


On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 18:47:26 +0100, Christian Schneider
<cschneid@cschneid.com> wrote:
> Sebastian Bergmann wrote:
> >  You assume wrong. My point is that you should not use getMethod() when
> >  you do not know whether or not the method exists.
> 
> Ok, let's look at the options then:
> 
> 5.0 - getMethods() [sure, you could probably use clever tricks to make
> this shorter but the general clumsiness will remain]:
> 
> foreach ($reflectionClass->getMethods() as $m)
> {
>        if ($m['name'] == "foo")
>        {
>                $method = $m;
>                break;
>        }
> }
> 
> 5.1 - hasMethod(): You were saying before that we don't need this and
> that's what I was basing my asumption on ;-) If we DO have hasMethod()
> then it is IMHO still unnecessarily complicated:
> 
> if ($reflectionClass->hasMethod("foo"))
>        $method = $reflectionClass->getMethod("foo");
> 
> Call me old-fashioned but I like the assignment-as-truth-value style
> where you combine the assignement and check into one statement. De
> gustribus non est disbutandum though :-)
> 
> >  Calling getMethod() for a method that does not exist is an error and
> >  should be consistently treated as such by raising an exception.
> 
> I disagree. The same could be said for getenv(). It's not part of a
> so-called OO API but it's the same operation: Return a key's value. It's
> half-way down the Python road where accessing undefined array indices
> causes exceptions. I like my PHP like my coffee: Simple and sweet :-)
> 
> Let me look at the problem from another point of view: What would your
> error handling with exceptions look like?
> 
> If you do things like
> $reflectionClass->getMethod("foo")->...
> then you have to catch your exception somewhere. Otherwise there is no
> difference to returning null as the program aborts. Now if you catch it
> in the same function you could as easily check for null. If on the other
> hand you're NOT catching it there your application has to know how to
> react to an unknown method. This can quickly lead to encapsulation
> problems. My point being that exceptions are very hard to handle
> properly and people disagree on how to do it (as seen in this thread) so
> they should be used sparingly and seldom be forced onto people. That's
> all I'm saying :-)
> 
> Happy holidays,
> - Chris
> 
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