Question

I have a method which creates an object of the User class, But If the user is not found I need to return something, but I am not sure WHAT:

function getUserById($id)
{
    $sth = $this->db->prepare("SELECT id, username, password, salt, email, created, last_active FROM users WHERE id = ?");
    $sth->execute(array($id));

    $sth->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_OBJ);

    if ($sth->rowCount() == 0) {
        //return what?
    }

    $row = $sth->fetch();
    $user = new User($row);

    return $user;
}

And the method should be used something like this:

$user = $user_mapper->getUserById($id);

The question is how should I handle If the user is not found? Should I use a try catch block and then throw an exception in the rowCount == 0 if statement, or just return false and use a if statement when I set the $user variable to the object?

Answer 1

That is completely up to you and your error handling philosophy.

I’d decide this based on: Is this an exceptional event? Should this never ever happen?
If the answer is yes, throw an exception. If the answer is this may happen, I just need to handle this case, return false.