Can't catch symfony FatalErrorException

Question

I have code like this:

try {
    $var = $object->getCollection()->first()->getItem()->getName();
} catch(\\Exception $e) {
    $var = null;
}
         


        

Answer 1

As you can see here, FatalErrorException extends ErrorException (PHP) that extends itself php Exception class.

Now that you have all this elements, you're ready for next step: as the name of exception says, this is a FatalError (a concept related to PHP and not with Symfony2; in that case they built a wrapper class for this error, maybe for interface purposes).

A PHP fatal error isn't a catchable one so is pretty useless to keep the code that could cause the FatalError, inside a try ... catch block

You should check, as a common and good rule, whenever is possible for returned values before try to access them.

Update

Since I've seen an upvote to my answer after PHP7 was released, I would like to caveat that since PHP7 is possible to catch fatal errors so this answer is still valid but only for PHP versions < 7.