PHP RFC: Use exceptions by default in SQLite3 extension

• Version: 0.1
• Date: 2022-10-24
• Author: BohwaZ, php at bohwaz dot net
• Status: Under discussion
• First Published at: http://wiki.php.net/rfc/sqlite3_exceptions

The SQLite3 extension is still using PHP warnings by default. PDO is using exceptions, like everyone else.

It's time to move to exceptions.

• Create a new exception class SQLite3Exception, which extends the SPL RuntimeException class, like in mysqli and PDO
• Make SQLite3 throw exceptions of class SQLite3Exception by default
• Remove the SQLite3::enableExceptions method
• Remove SQLite3 error code from the error message, and assign it to the exception code

• Calls to SQLite3::enableExceptions will break, but can be easily removed, or made optional using method_exists
• Code relying on hiding warnings will break
• Code already relying on exceptions will not see a difference, as previously \Exception was thrown, and \SQLite3Exception is a subclass of \Exception
• Code parsing the error message to get the error code (??)

The soft option would be to keep the enableExceptions method for one version, but make throwing SQLite3Exceptions the default behaviour, and then remove enableExceptions in following version.

Next PHP 8.x (8.3?)

None.

Only SQLite3.

None that I can think of.

None.

None.

Everything outside of SQLite3 extension.

Assign SQLite3 error constants to SQLite3Exception class, eg. SQLite3Exception::READONLY, see https://www.sqlite.org/rescode.html

• Proposal 1: in 8.3 remove enableExceptions, throw SQLite3Exception by default
• Proposal 2: in 8.3 deprecate enableExceptions, throw SQLite3Exception by default, but allow to keep warnings instead of exceptions (but deprecate it), then in 8.4 remove enableExceptions and warnings
• Choice 3: no change

Pull request: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/9816 (proposal 1)

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1. the version(s) it was merged into
2. a link to the git commit(s)
3. a link to the PHP manual entry for the feature
4. a link to the language specification section (if any)

Links to external references, discussions or RFCs

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