No Empty Catch

try...catch structures are an error control structure : if any error happens in the try block, an exception is emitted, and it will be caught (or not) in one of the catch blocks.

Empty catch blocks means that the error will be identified, but treated by omission. It is a way to say : we know about this error but we can ignore it. This is even worse when the caught Exception is of class Exception, which is the most general type of error.

At worse, a caught exception should be logged, so as to provide a basis for future analyze. On the other hand, commenting an empty catch block will do the same.

Rule Details

This rule is aimed at avoiding empty catch block.

The following patterns are considered warnings:

<?php

try {

} catch (Exception $e) {
	
}

?>

The following patterns are not considered warnings:

<?php

try {

} catch (SomeException $e) {
	// commenting why we can ignore this
} catch (SomeOtherException $e) {
	// reserved for future use
	$log->log($e->getMessage());
} catch (SomeDbException $e) {
	// logging
	$log->log($e->getMessage());
	// actually taking some action
	$this->db->rollback(); 
}

?>