Have you even written a comment like this one?
function foo(?Bar $bar): void {
// TODO: handle nulls
...
}
Previously, I had those, too.
Not anymore.
I found that throwing the NotImplemented
exception instead of a mere comment makes more sense to me - whenever you hit that line, the exception forces you to pay off this bit of technical debt:
function foo(?Bar $bar): void {
if (!$bar) {
throw new NotImplemented();
}
...
}
Only recently, I have found a really nice feature in PhpStorm called Exception Breakpoints. The idea is that whenever a specified exception is thrown, the debugger stops at the line that throws the exception.
And it's a perfect match for the NotImplemented
exception. After configuring it, the debugger stop anytime when the execution hits a feature, or a special case, that is not implemented yet.
Configure it in Run -> View Breakpoints
by pressing + -> PHP Exception Breakpoints
, entering the full exception class name, and pressing OK:
Just wanted to share, I hope you'll find it useful.
Very much agreed. Forcing the caller to think about unhandled cases prevents a lot of headaches in the long run. I am a huge fan of Kotlin, one of the reasons why is its
TODO
function which is the best of both worlds; it throws aNotImplementedError
and is recognized by IDEs as an unhandled todo case.