Why doesn't PHP catch a “Class not found” error?

Question

In the following example, if the class does not exist, I want to catch the error and create a Null class instead.

But in spite of my try/catch statement

Answer 1

You need to use class_exists to see if the class exists before you try and instantiate it.

Incidentally, if you're using a class autoloader, be sure to set the second arg to true.