Stop Using Try-Catch in Laravel Controllers: Here's the Better Way

If you’re sprinkling try-catch blocks inside your Laravel controllers, it’s time to stop and take a step back. This pattern might feel safe, like you’re protecting your application from breaking. But in reality, it’s often a code smell — and there’s a cleaner, more scalable approach built right into Laravel.

Let’s walk through why try-catch in controllers is a bad idea, and what you should be doing instead.

Why try-catch in Controllers is a Code Smell

1. Breaks Separation of Concerns

Controllers should do one thing: receive input and return a response. When you put error handling logic directly into them, you’re mixing responsibilities. It makes controllers bloated and harder to test or maintain.

2. You’re Ignoring Laravel’s Exception System

Laravel already provides a global exception handler at:

app/Exceptions/Handler.php

This class is designed to catch and respond to unhandled exceptions. It’s where you should centralize error responses, logging, and even custom exception mapping.

3. Inconsistent Error Responses

When every controller handles its own exceptions, your API or web app ends up with inconsistent error formats. One endpoint might return { error: "Something went wrong" }, while another might return a stack trace or HTML. That’s not good, especially in a public API.

4. Hides Real Problems

Using a broad catch (\Exception $e) block is dangerous — you might be swallowing critical bugs that should be fixed, not hidden.

The Right Way: Use Laravel’s Global Handler

Laravel routes all exceptions through Handler.php. Here’s how to use it properly.

1. Throw Custom Exceptions

In your service or domain layer, throw specific exceptions when something goes wrong:

throw new InsufficientBalanceException("Your balance is too low.");

2. Catch and Format Them in Handler.php

Open app/Exceptions/Handler.php and modify the render() method:

public function render($request, Throwable $exception)
{
    if ($exception instanceof InsufficientBalanceException) {
        return response()->json([
            'error' => $exception->getMessage(),
        ], 400);
    }

    return parent::render($request, $exception);
}

Now every time that exception is thrown, it will return a proper response — and your controller stays clean.

Other Considerations

✅ Validation? Use Form Requests

Don’t wrap validation logic in try-catch. Use Laravel’s FormRequest:

php artisan make:request StoreUserRequest

This way, validation errors are automatically turned into JSON with status 422.

✅ Auth and Permissions? Use Middleware

Avoid catching permission errors in your controller. Instead, use middleware like auth, can, or custom gates. Let Laravel throw AuthorizationException, and handle it globally.

✅ Want Logs? Use the report() Method

If you want to log certain exceptions or send them to an external service like Sentry:

public function report(Throwable $exception)
{
    if ($exception instanceof DomainException) {
        // Send to external service
    }

    parent::report($exception);
}

Finally

Writing clean Laravel code means trusting the framework. Laravel gives you powerful tools to manage exceptions at a global level. By centralizing your error handling, your code becomes:

• More readable
• More testable
• Easier to maintain
• More consistent across endpoints

So next time you catch yourself typing try { ... } catch (Exception $e) inside a controller, stop. There’s a better way — and it’s already in your Laravel toolbox.

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