Empty Function Body

ID

php.empty_function_body

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

medium

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

medium

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Php

Tags

code_smell, suspicious

Description

Reports a function or method that is declared with a brace block but contains no statements, for example function handle() { }. A comment-only body counts as empty because comments carry no behaviour.

Abstract methods and interface methods are not reported: they legitimately have no body (they end with ;, not a brace block). Empty constructors are handled by a separate rule and are skipped here.

Rationale

An empty body is almost always an unfinished stub left behind during development, or dead code whose logic was removed but whose declaration survived. Either way a caller invokes something that silently does nothing, which is easy to mistake for working behaviour and hard to spot in review.

<?php
class Importer
{
    public function process()   // FLAW — declared but does nothing
    {
    }

    public function run(array $rows): void   // OK — has statements
    {
        foreach ($rows as $row) {
            $this->process();
        }
    }
}

Remediation

Implement the intended behaviour, or remove the declaration if it is no longer needed. If the empty body is a deliberate placeholder (for example a hook that subclasses override), make the intent explicit with a short comment and consider marking the method abstract.

References