php – Validation Class – should return false or throw exception?

validators should not throw exceptions, as failing a validator is not an “exceptional” event.

the rest of your code should throw exceptions if it gets bad data.

when you run a validator function you are clearly prepared to handle any problems detected with a simple test. wrapping everything in a try/catch block and stopping all execution only to try to recover is overkill. Just use and if statement, and be prepared to show the user some error messages.

Return false.
Exception is EXCEPTION, and should be thrown in exceptional cases only, when script can’t continue execution.

Throwing an exception seems a bit extreme, as a string not validating isn’t really an exceptional event as far as a string validation suite is concerned.

As such, I’d have thought that returning false would seem the most logical solution. Additionally, you could also pass back a meaningful textual error via a reference variable, if this makes sense as far as your implementation is concerned.

For example:

// In the class definition...
public function validateSTring($stringToValidate, &$errorString=null) {

    // If an error occurs...
    if($errorString) {
        $errorString = 'Something went wrong along the way.';
        return false;
    }     

}


// When calling...

$errorString = '';
$validationSuite->validateString($stringToValidate, $errorString);