PHP Function - Trapping for Error or Success Result - php

Question

I'm working on my first function with PHP - it's a login function that calls cURL to login to an API. This is all working well so far, but I would like to add some error checking so that if the login fails or succeeds I can branch for that.
There's 2 possible types of errors that I can see:
cURL errors
API login errors
If there are no cURL errors the API will return a response in JSON like this for a successful login:
{
"token": "6a2b4af445bb7e02a77891a380f7a47a57d3f99ff408ec57a62a",
"layout": "Tasks",
"errorCode": "0",
"result": "OK"
}
and this for a failed login:
{
"errorMessage": "Invalid user account and/or password; please try again",
"errorCode": "212"
}
so that should be easy enough to trap for by the error code or result value. If there is a cURL error there could be many types of errors.
Here's the outline of my function at the moment:
function Login ($username, $password, $layout) {
$curl = curl_init();
// set curl options
$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);
curl_close($curl);
if ($err) {
echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
return json_decode($response, true);
}
}
and I call it via:
$login = Login($username, $password, $layout);
Looking for advice on how I can return an error if there was a curl error and check the response on the calling page that calls the function.

Answer 1

As suggested by #larwence-cherone in the comments, you should throw and catch exceptions.
// note: made the method name lowercase, because uppercase usually indicates a class
function login ($username, $password, $layout) {
$curl = curl_init();
// set curl options
$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);
curl_close($curl);
if ($err) {
throw new Exception($err);
} else {
// returns an associative array
$result = json_decode($response, true);
// the status was not OK or if we received an error code.
// Check the API doc for a recommended way to do this
if ($result['result'] !== 'OK' || $result['errorCode'] > 0) {
$errorMessage = $result['errorMessage'];
// no error message: return a genuine error
if (!$errorMessage) {
$errorMessage = 'An undefined error occurred';
}
throw new Exception($errorMessage);
}
// if no error occurred, return the API result as an
return $result;
}
}
call the method in a try/catch block:
try {
$login = login($username, $password, $layout);
print_r($login);
} catch (Exception $error) {
echo $error;
}
If you want to refine it, you could create your own exception(s) by extending the SPL Exception class.