PHP “Exception not found”

I have a somehow funny issue. While trying to understand why a certain website returns http code 500 to browser, I found the message

PHP Fatal error:  Class 'MZ\MailChimpBundle\Services\Exception' not found in /var/www/website/vendor/bundles/MZ/MailChimpBundle/Services/MailChimp.php on line 41

in apache log. Looking at the mentioned line:

throw new Exception('This bundle needs the cURL PHP extension.');

I now understand how to get the site working, but I still wonder why the code for throwing the exception (which would have resulted in a more helpful log message) failed. What could be the reason?

Answer

The MZMailChimpBundle does not contain a class named Exception within the MZMailChimpBundleServices namespace.

Because of that simple fact and as the error message that the exception should signal is related to an integration problem (check for the curl library) I assume that this is a bug.

The original has meant Exception and not Exception here. It’s a somewhat common mistake that can happen with namespaces. To fix the file, either alias/import Exception as Exception:

namespace MZMailChimpBundleServices;
use Exception;

and/or change the new line in MZMailChimpBundle/Services/MailChimp.php:

throw new Exception('This bundle needs the cURL PHP extension.');

See as well the related question: How to use “root” namespace of php? and the one with the same Class ‘NamespaceExample’ not found error message: Calling a static method from a class in another namespace in PHP.