PHP Fatal Error trying to create contribution with duplicate Transaction ID causes script to crash (using api4 on WordPress)

Question

If I use the API Explorer V4, and I try to create a new contribution with a Transaction ID that already exists, then the response I get back is as follows:

status: 500, statusText: Internal Server Error, xhrStatus: complete
{
  "error_code": 0,
  "error_message": "Duplicate error - existing contribution record(s) have a matching Transaction ID or Invoice ID. Contribution record ID(s) are: 100"
}

But when running an external script (CiviCRM v5.48.1 with WordPress v5.9.3), if I try to add a contribution and the Transaction ID already exists, it causes script to crash and returns the following php fatal error in the log:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught CRM_Core_Exception: [0: Duplicate error - existing contribution record(s) have a matching Transaction ID or Invoice ID. Contribution record ID(s) are: 99
  thrown in /home/me/public_html/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/CRM/Contribute/BAO/Contribution.php on line 103

My expectation was that I should still get a response/result from my call that contains the error message without crashing the script.

This is my test code to reproduce the error:

<?php

require_once '/home/me/public_html/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/civicrm.config.php';
require_once '/home/me/public_html/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/CRM/Core/Config.php';
$civi_config = CRM_Core_Config::singleton();

for ($i=1; $i<=3; $i++) {
    
    $transaction_id = "xyz123"; // needs to be unique but use same id to test for this bug
    $total_amount = 2*$i;
    $source = 'Test '.$i;
    $contribution_results = civicrm_api4('Contribution', 'create', [
      'checkPermissions'=>FALSE,
      'values' => [
        'contact_id' => '262', 
        'financial_type_id' => '1', 
        'payment_instrument_id' => '1', 
        'total_amount' => $total_amount, 
        'trxn_id' => $transaction_id, 
        'currency' => 'USD', 
        'source' => $source,
      ],
    ]);
    
    echo "<pre>";
    print_r($contribution_results);
    echo "</pre>";
}

?>

Answer 1

It's throwing an exception so if you don't want that to kill your script you need to enclose the api call in a try {} catch {}block. See php documentation on exceptions Eg:

try {
  $contribution_results = civicrm_api4( ...... );
}
catch (Exception $e) {
  print "Error: " . $e->getMessage();
}