What is the advantage of using try {} catch {} versus if {} else {}

Question

I am switching from plain mysql in php to PDO and I have noticed that the common way to test for errors is using a try / catch combination instead of if / else combinations.

Answer 1

Since PDO is using objects, they are raising Exceptions if an error occur. The old mysql/mysqli were mere functions and didn't throw Exceptions they simply returned error codes. Try/catch is used when an Exception can be thrown from the code, and you catch it in the catch-clause, which is an object oriented way to handle errors. You can't catch Exceptions with if/else blocks - they share nothing with try/catch.