PHP Twilio - help needed to catch authentication errors - php

Question

I am new to the Twilio PHP API and am finding it difficult using the sample code and even finding the correct documentation on the Twilio site to help me implement SMS messaging into our web app.
After much trial and error, and reading through some postings on this site, I have gotten far enough to figure out how to send a simple SMS message and even use a try/catch structure to deal with bad recipient phone numbers.
What I cannot for the life of me figure out is how to catch authentication errors with a client's SID and AUTH token. I'd like to catch authentication errors for a client's credentials before I try even sending messages for them. Some clients may blast a message to 200 customers so I don't want to spin my wheels if their authenticaiton fails. Heres what I have been trying:
require_once K_DOCROOT.'/includes/twilio-php-main/src/Twilio/autoload.php';
// use Twilio\Rest\Client;
// Find your Account SID and Auth Token at twilio.com/console
// and set the environment variables. See http://twil.io/secure
$sid = "ACf6eXXXGGGDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD"; // intentionally incorrect
$token = "164d3a88f753e553691960fb4d405f82";
$dest = "[phone]"; // recipient number
try {
$twilio = new Twilio\Rest\Client($sid, $token); // Had to change this to make it work without the USE above
// $message = $twilio->messages->create($dest, // to
// [
// "body" => "Testing 123",
// "from" => "[phone]"
// ]
// );
//
// echo "Results: ".$message->sid;
}
catch (Exception $e) {
echo $e->getCode()." : ".$e->getMessage();
}
When I run this without the $twilio->messages->create() code, I get nothing... no errors, no responses whatsoever. If I uncomment the create() section where I try and send a message, I get the following:
20003 : [HTTP 401] Unable to create record: Authentication Error - invalid username
Which makes sense. But it is forcing me to catch the authentication error when sending a message and not before.
Maybe I am missing something, but is there some way to check for authentication errors, or get back some sort of status code letting me know a client's authentication was successful or not?
Also, if you have a link to the documentation that covers error handling for Client() calls, I would greatly appreciate it.