PHP Try Catch Guide

If you think that working with exceptions is hard to understand, exception nesting will look even harder (nested exceptions, chained exceptions, exception bubbling - it is all the same). Well, it is a step above, and it can be used if your application...

The key to understanding custom exception concept lies in knowing how to catch them. You have to know syntax, and you have to know how to use it.
First, the syntax itself
Basicaly it looks like an switch/case statement. The above code could be written as the next one, and all will be valid and will work perfectly. The try catch syntax is actually automatically handled multiple if statement!...

The best way to lose the fear of exceptions is to start throwing them. Recipe is simple: whenever you come to case that something is wrong and your function or method can not accomplish its task, just throw an exception.
Example 1
My favorite case is when I'm using a configuration values in my applications. Ops, there is no value at all, not an numeric value? I'll just throw an exception and stop thinking about that. This case is especially important if your application will have...

This example demonstrates the drawbacks of returning null from your methods. I allays preach to my colleagues that when something is wrong, your method should throw an exception instead of returning a null.
But sometimes, especially if I'm writing some tools for myself, because of the laziness, I use the return null too....