Question

Once I saw someone using the following code for __get method and it seemed elegant so I copied.

public function __get($param)
{
    if (!isset($this->params[$param])) {
        throw new Exception("Property doesn't exist");
    }
    return $this->params[$param];
}

But now it seems too much to handle an exception when doing a simple action based on whether the property exists or not.
What is the better thing to do in this case. is returning NULL and then checking enough?

Answer 1

In php, this isn’t an exceptional circumstance, unlike some other languages. I agree with you in that an exception is too dramatic unless there’s special circumstances at play.

I would tend to mimic the expected behavior that is normal in php, which is to return the value of null and trigger an error of level E_NOTICE or E_USER_NOTICE. This is the normal behavior when you try to read an undefined property, array indice, or variable.

btw- you might also be intrested in implementing the magic __isset method