Showing errors in PHP

[csdude55]

I'm rebuilding my site using a subdomain as the sandbox, and nobody can see this section but me.

I have display_errors turned off in php.ini, but I don't remember if that's a default setting or something that I changed at some point. My last major rebuild was 2013, so it's been awhile since I needed this.

So the question is, if I turn on display_errors, are my regular users going to see PHP warnings on live pages, or does it only work if I add this to the top of the page:

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

Is this even what I'm looking for? Specifically, I have a very long script that's throwing a 500 error, and it would be nice if the system could show me where the problem is.

If turning on display_errors is going to start showing errors everywhere, is there a way to make it just work on this subdomain?

TIA!

[robzilla]

if I turn on display_errors, are my regular users going to see PHP warnings

If you turn it on in php.ini, then yes, everyone will see your errors (unless overridden again with ini_set) -- it's a system-wide setting. If you use the ini_set() function within a script, you are configuring a setting only for the run duration of the script. If you can SSH into the server, you can also 'tail -f' your error log; this keeps the errors separate from the output in your browser.

[Peter_S]

You can also use "set_error_handler" [ [php.net...] ] to define your own function to handle error. Like that you can display error messages yourself for example.

[smallcompany]

This is what I do for PHP errors, not to show them, but have them written into a text file:

; Supress PHP Errors
display_startup_errors = off
display_errors = off
html_errors = off
docref_root = 0
docref_ext = 0
; PHP Error Logging
log_errors = on
error_reporting = 6135
error_log = /someserverpath/phperror.txt

The above is from my .user.ini file. Depending on your server configuration, you may use .htaccess, not sure.

Then, I have a cron job setup to email me every morning, showing the size of the error log which tells me if something has changed or not.

I hope this helps.

Cheers!

[csdude55]

Thanks for the help, guys.

Sometimes, I get an error_log file in the same directory as the PHP script with the error, which is helpful... but sometimes I don't. Yesterday I discovered a 20M file with a whole lot of PHP warnings, so I know that option isn't turned off, but I'm not seeing that error log in the directory with the script I'm currently working on.

@smallcompany, my config looks similar to yours, but under error_reporting I have:

E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_DEPRECATED

I'm making a guess that this means to show all errors except for E_NOTICE and E_DEPRECATED?

And error_log is just set to error_log (no path).

[smallcompany]

If you tell it where is your error log file, it'll always log it there, so you don't need to search for log files. 6135 should be E_ALL without E_NOTICE.
Looks like setting the location for your PHP error log file would help you.