I'm building a custom autoloader based on Zend Framework's autoloading (related question here).

The basic approach, taken from that question, is

class My_Autoloader implements Zend_Loader_Autoloader_Interface 
{
    public function autoload($class) 
    {
        // add your logic to find the required classes in here
    }
}

and then binding the new autoloader class to a class prefix.

Now what I'm unsure about is how to handle errors inside the autoload method (for example, "class file not found") in a proper, ZF compliant way. I'm new to the framework, its conventions and style.

• Do I quietly return false and let the class creation process crash?

• Do I output an error or log message somehow (which would be nice to pinpoint the problem) and return false? If so, what is the Zend way of doing that?

• Do I trigger an error?

• Do I throw an exception? If so, what kind?