PHP handle null handling by exception

Question

Is there a way I can tell PHP to throw an exception when I am trying to access a member or method on a null object?

E.g.:

$x = null;
$x->foo = 5; // Null field access
$x->bar(); // Null method call

Right now, I only get the following errors which are not nice to handle:

PHP Notice:  Trying to get property of non-object in ...
PHP Warning:  Creating default object from empty value in ...
PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined method stdClass::bar() in ...

I would like to have a specific exception being thrown instead. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Since PHP7 you can catch fatal errors, example below:

$x = null;
try {
    $x->method();
} catch (\Throwable $e) {
    throw new \Exception('$x is null');
}

Answer 2

You can turn your warnings into exceptions using set_error_handler() so when ever an warning occurs, it will generate an Exception which you can catch in a try-catch block.

Fatal errors can't be turned into Exceptions, they are designed for php to stop asap. however we can handle the fetal error gracefully by doing some last minute processing using register_shutdown_function()

<?php

//Gracefully handle fatal errors
register_shutdown_function(function(){
    $error = error_get_last();
    if( $error !== NULL) {
        echo 'Fatel Error';
    }
});

//Turn errors into exceptions
set_error_handler(function($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline, array $errcontext) {
    throw new ErrorException($errstr, 0, $errno, $errfile, $errline);
});

try{
    $x = null;
    $x->foo = 5; // Null field access
    $x->bar(); // Null method call
}catch(Exception $ex){
    echo "Caught exception";
}