Looking for a way to stop a process while calling a function without return

Question

I have developped an habit of using a return to stop a code sequence from executing, even if the return is used on a function that returns nothing

$form = $this->getForm('activity');    
$this->view->form = $form;
return $this->render('create'); // Like this

In Zend Framework it stop the execution of the current action and renders the view which name is the parameter of the function $this->render().

I have recently ran PHPMD on my code and all of those statements gets flagged as Void function result used

I was wondering, how bad is this habit and what would be better?

Answer 1

The only point I see is that $this->render('create') returns void which should not be returned again.

If the action does not require any return value (Zend Framework 1), then you should place your return on a separate line without any return value.

$form = $this->getForm('activity');    
$this->view->form = $form;
$this->render('create'); // Like this
return;

This is common syntax in Zend Framework at least for forward. You will also often see it for redirect, but this one already has an exit-statement within the Zend code. According to the ZF1 documentation the intention of forward is to execute the current action and then also execute a second action. But in their code example, they also use return $this->_forward(). On my job however, I learnt to put the return onto a new line to make clear that nothing is returned.

As an alternative, you can of course use if else blocks. However, in my opinion they are not always clearer (and I am not a fan of these strict Java rules).

if ($something) {
    $this->_forward();
} else {
    // do other code
}