So today, I instigated a lively discussion on the topic of WP_Error vs PHP Exceptions.

I’m curious why try/catch exceptions are rarely used in WP dev? Any insight?

— Justin Sternberg (@Jtsternberg) April 2, 2015

A great deal of discussion later, I have some great resources compiled and a summary:

• Peter Baylies provided this link to a WordPress trac ticket discussing this issue, as well as a link to Ryan McCue’s post about his distaste for the use of WP_Error from almost 3 years ago.
  • Ryan also posted it on wordpress-hackers for more discussion.
  • As the lead WordPress Lead Developer, I was particularly interested in what Andrew Nacin had to say.
• Mario Y. Peshev, Coen Jacobs, and Andrew Nacin all pitched in and provided some great feedback.
• As Twitter is wont to do, the conversation became a bit fractured, but Andrey Savchenko joined and this conversation branch is also helpful.

For me, the most helpful takeaway (and the TL;DR) would be this response from Andrew Nacin:

@Jtsternberg @Rarst @no_fear_inc as in the kinds of developers that will use that tool. The answer would likely be WP_Error in many cases.

— Andrew Nacin (@nacin) April 2, 2015

As always, I’m exceedingly thankful for those who take time out of their day to respond on twitter. I always learn a ton! Hopefully you’ll find this post helpful if you’re researching or curious about the issue like I was.