errors.md

How to show and handle errors in PHP?

When you develop you will definitely want to turn on error reporting in PHP. It gives you valuable information as to why something has failed. Let's check some of the most important error reporting directives in php.ini:

• error_reporting

  This sets which errors should be reported. Using E_ALL is a good practice.

• display_errors

  This handles displaying errors to the screen.

• log_errors

  This controls reporting errors to a log file. Recommended practice is to always have this enabled.

• error_log

  This defines error log file where errors should be written. It only applies if log_errors is enabled.

Showing errors should depend on the environment your application is present.

Development environment

When developing your application locally, you want to show errors on screen and in logs.

display_errors = on
log_errors = on
error_reporting = E_ALL

Production environment

Be careful when deploying application code online. Disable showing errors on screen for security purposes. You definitely don't want to expose error messages which can contain delicate information about your application to the outside world. However, having logging errors enabled is always useful for information about what went wrong in case of errors.

display_errors = off
log_errors = on
error_reporting = E_ALL

Error reporting can also be changed with the error_reporting() function.

error_reporting(0);

See also

• Error Handling and Logging - A must read PHP manual chapter about configuring the error reporting in PHP.
• Error in PHP - PHP manual errors chapter.
• Monolog - Logging library for PHP.