Looking up the name and event for a ticket

Question

This code is from my Kohana project. How can I make it more beautiful? Should I use try-catch instead? How could I avoid writing exit() twice?

public function action_index()
{
    $id = $this->request->query('id');
    if (!empty($id)) {
        $ticket = ORM::factory('ticket')
            ->where('id', '=', $id)
            ->find();
        if (!empty($ticket)) {
            $event = ORM::factory('event')
                ->where('id', '=', $ticket->event_id)
                ->find();
            if (!empty($event)) {
                $this->template->ticket = $ticket->id;
                $this->template->name = $ticket->name;
                $this->template->event = $event->title;
            } else {
                exit();
            }
        } else {
            exit();
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

You can avoid writing exit() twice by adding a return statement at the deepest level, after passing all the checks. This should be equivalent to your code:

public function action_index()
{
    $id = $this->request->query('id');
    if (!empty($id)) {
        $ticket = ORM::factory('ticket')
            ->where('id', '=', $id)
            ->find();
        if (!empty($ticket)) {
            $event = ORM::factory('event')
                ->where('id', '=', $ticket->event_id)
                ->find();
            if (!empty($event)) {
                $this->template->ticket = $ticket->id;
                $this->template->name = $ticket->name;
                $this->template->event = $event->title;
                return;
            }
        }
        exit();
    }
}

That said, I find it a bit strange to exit() in the middle of a function. It's an abrupt behavior in a program in general, this kind of control is usually done at higher levels, in order to do any necessary cleanup, such as releasing resources, closing connections.