Had this function:

public function insert($table, $parameters)
{
    // format the MySQL query
    $sql = sprintf(
        'INSERT INTO mytodo.%s (%s) VALUES(%s)',
        $table,
        implode(', ', array_keys($parameters)),
        ':'.implode(', :', array_keys($parameters))
    );
    // die(var_dump($sql));

    try {
        // build up the SQL query
        $statement = $this->pdo->prepare($sql);
        $statement->execute($parameters);
        //require 'controllers/index.php';
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        var_dump($e);
        $e->getMessage();
        //require 'controllers/404.php';
    }

    //        die(var_dump($sql));
}

and it just wasn't working no matter what I did (checked whether my $sql was correct or not, whether I was doing the PDO thing correctly. And I would never see any error message with the exception I caught (it was going to the catch block). It wasn't until I did the var_dump($e) that I saw that there really was an Exception in that $e, but getMessage() wasn't showing it.

I got this:

" args: (array)
[1 element] 0: (array)
[1 element] name: (string) "yoyo" 1: (array)
[6 elements] file: (string) ".../add-name.php" line: (integer) 11 function: (string) "insert" class: (string) "QueryBuilder" type: (string) "->" args: (array)
[2 elements] 0: (string) "users" 1: (array)
[1 element] name: (string) "yoyo" 2: (array)
[4 elements] file: (string) ".../index.php" line: (integer) 9 args: (array)
[1 element] 0: (string) "/.../add-name.php" function: (string) "require" previous:Exception:private: (null) NULL errorInfo: (array)
[3 elements] 0: (string) "HY000" 1: (integer) 1364 2: (string) "Field 'id' doesn't have a default value"

So now I actually see the real error with the "Field 'id' doesn't have a default value", so I can search whatever that is, but how come $e-getMessage() didn't work?