Should abort(404); be returned?

Question

Using Laravel 5, should abort(404) be returned or will it abort and throw an error and stop my method? I have seen both and both seem to work.

public function show($id)
{
    try {
        $item = Item::where('id',$id)->firstOrFail();
    }
    catch(ModelNotFoundException $exception)
    {
        return abort(404);
    }
    return view('item.show')->with(compact('item'));
}

Answer 1

firstOrFail() will throw an error if a model is not found. If you want to catch it I would suggest doing it in the global.php

Yo do not need to return the abort() as shown in the documentation

Answer 2

You can abort 404 or 403 error.http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/errors#http-exceptions

abort(404, 'Page Not Found');