There are several reasons for a method not to have a method body:

* It is an unintentional omission and should be fixed to prevent unexpected behavior in production.

* It is not yet, or never will be, supported. In this case an UnsupportedOperationException should be thrown.

* The method is an intentionally-blank override. In this case a nested comment should explain the reason for the blank override.

Noncompliant Code Example

public function doSomething() {
}

public function doSomethingElse() {
}

Compliant Solution

public function doSomething() {
  // Do nothing because of X and Y.
}

public function doSomethingElse() {
  throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

Exceptions

Empty methods in abstract classes

abstract class Animal {
  public function speak() {}  // default implementation ignored
}