In this episode, we're tackling a common issue in backend development: how to clean up your code when you have lots of branching logic based on a data value—like handling different types of webhooks or exceptions. We start off by looking at the traditional way of dealing with something like a Stripe webhook, where you'd typically have a bunch of if-else
statements checking what kind of event just happened (such as a card declined or a subscription canceled). As you can imagine, this gets pretty messy and hard to maintain the more event types you add.
Next, we refactor this classic setup into something much neater by separating each action into its own method (e.g., handleCardDeclined
). But the real magic comes when we use dynamic method calling. By converting the event type (like card_declined
) into the correct method name, we can dynamically call the method for any event just by updating the string, meaning you never have to touch the main handler again as you add new event types. It's super flexible and keeps things extra tidy.
We then shift gears and apply this same dynamic approach to exception handling. Instead of chaining a bunch of catch
statements for different exceptions, we use reflection and a little trait to grab the short name of the exception and dynamically call the relevant handler method. This lets you handle new exception types with just one new method—no more repeated code blocks or duplicated logic.
Finally, we show you how to extend this idea even further, such as by dynamically creating responses based on the type of exception, tying everything together for robust and maintainable error handling.
If you ever find yourself cursing at huge blocks of branching code, this episode will give you some cool tricks in dynamic method calling to seriously tidy things up.