Multicatch RFC proposal View as Markdown

I've just created an RFC draft for catching multiple exception types
in one catch statement:
https://github.com/bronek89/php-multicatch-rfc

I wrote RFC on github to check if there is any positive response from community.

Basically it introduces possibility to write code such as:

try {
// ...
} catch (DbException | ResourceNotFoundException $e) {
throw new HttpException("not found", 404, $e);
} catch (\Throwable $e) {
throw new HttpException("fail", 500, $e);
}

Provided patch is my first experience with PHP source code, so it
could be not perfectly written (or simply poor ;-) ) .

What do you think about introducing that kind of feature into PHP?

I think introducing union types should be a prerequisite for this as
we don't want the much more widely impactful feature of arg/return
type hinting to be constrained by syntax we choose here (and making
them inconsistent would be even worse).

That said, from a general principle point of view, it certainly
doesn't seem unreasonable. In an own-codebase one would probably use
interfaces, have each exception implement the the common denominator
(INotFound or what-have-you), but in a world of foreign components
that's not always practical.

On the other hand, one could just catch a throwable and use a pattern like this:

} catch (\Throwable $e) {
switch (true) {
case ($e instanceof DbException):
case ($e instanceof ResourceNotFoundException):
throw new HttpException("not found", 404, $e);
default:
throw new HttpException("fail", 500, $e);
}
}

So I'm not personally going to get super excited about it, even if I
would vote in favor.

-Sara

Hello everyone!

I've just created an RFC draft for catching multiple exception types
in one catch statement:
https://github.com/bronek89/php-multicatch-rfc

I wrote RFC on github to check if there is any positive response from community.

Basically it introduces possibility to write code such as:

try {
// ...
} catch (DbException | ResourceNotFoundException $e) {
throw new HttpException("not found", 404, $e);
} catch (\Throwable $e) {
throw new HttpException("fail", 500, $e);
}

Provided patch is my first experience with PHP source code, so it
could be not perfectly written (or simply poor ;-) ) .

What do you think about introducing that kind of feature into PHP?

Yes, please. The alternative work-arounds are not as good.

Though I also am concerned about it getting in the way of other
proposals, I don't think it would be an issue. The meaning of the
syntax in your example is pretty obvious. So the only way it could be
a problem is if another RFC proposed a different and 'not as obvious'
meaning.

cheers
Dan