What do we need the PHP-exception code for? Any use case scenario?

Question

Okay, its a very lame question for many but I hope I will have overwhelming response :)

When I throw an Exception in PHP I can add a code to the message.
I catch an exception and handle it according to its type (Like InvalidArgumentException or OutOfBoundException). I log the message or display it or do whatever is suitable.
I can add also append a previous exception to trace a path to the origin of the error.

BUT one thing I have never used or never thought of: how useful is code?

For example:

throw new Exception("db Error", $code, $previousException); 

What do I do with $code?

Answer 1

The message is for display to the user, while the code is for use by your program. So for example, in your "database error" example, you might make up a set of codes like

1. Can't connect
2. Error during query
3. Empty result
4. Error closing connection

and then use the appropriate code. Then when other parts of your code saw they exception, they would know what happened and could possibly deal with it intelligently.

Answer 2

How $code is interpreted is dependent on the exception type. For example, if you have an Exception subclass that represents a MySQL database error, then the $code could be the native MySQL error code. In the case of a low-level IO error, this could be a value from <errno.h>.

Basically, $code should contain whatever you need to programmatically handle an exception. Most exceptions are meant to be handled somewhere. If all of your exceptions are simply displayed as errors, then $code is only useful if you need to include an error code from a library like the MySQL client library.