How can I get useful error messages in PHP?
For syntax errors, you need to enable error display in the php.ini. By default these are turned off because you don't want a "customer" seeing the error messages. Check this page in the PHP documentation for information on the 2 directives: error_reporting
and display_errors
. display_errors
is probably the one you want to change. If you can't modify the php.ini, you can also add the following lines to an .htaccess file:
php_flag display_errors onphp_value error_reporting 2039
You may want to consider using the value of E_ALL (as mentioned by Gumbo) for your version of PHP for error_reporting
to get all of the errors. more info
3 other items: (1) You can check the error log file as it will have all of the errors (unless logging has been disabled). (2) Adding the following 2 lines will help you debug errors that are not syntax errors:
error_reporting(-1);ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
(3) Another option is to use an editor that checks for errors when you type, such as PhpEd. PhpEd also comes with a debugger which can provide more detailed information. (The PhpEd debugger is very similar to xdebug and integrates directly into the editor so you use 1 program to do everything.)
Cartman's link is also very good: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-debug/
The following enables all errors:
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);ini_set('display_errors', 1);error_reporting(-1);
Also see the following links
The following code should display all errors:
<?php// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------// - Display Errors// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ini_set('display_errors', 'On');ini_set('html_errors', 0);// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------// - Error Reporting// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------error_reporting(-1);// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------// - Shutdown Handler// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------function ShutdownHandler(){ if(@is_array($error = @error_get_last())) { return(@call_user_func_array('ErrorHandler', $error)); }; return(TRUE);};register_shutdown_function('ShutdownHandler');// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------// - Error Handler// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------function ErrorHandler($type, $message, $file, $line){ $_ERRORS = Array( 0x0001 => 'E_ERROR', 0x0002 => 'E_WARNING', 0x0004 => 'E_PARSE', 0x0008 => 'E_NOTICE', 0x0010 => 'E_CORE_ERROR', 0x0020 => 'E_CORE_WARNING', 0x0040 => 'E_COMPILE_ERROR', 0x0080 => 'E_COMPILE_WARNING', 0x0100 => 'E_USER_ERROR', 0x0200 => 'E_USER_WARNING', 0x0400 => 'E_USER_NOTICE', 0x0800 => 'E_STRICT', 0x1000 => 'E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR', 0x2000 => 'E_DEPRECATED', 0x4000 => 'E_USER_DEPRECATED' ); if(!@is_string($name = @array_search($type, @array_flip($_ERRORS)))) { $name = 'E_UNKNOWN'; }; return(print(@sprintf("%s Error in file \xBB%s\xAB at line %d: %s\n", $name, @basename($file), $line, $message)));};$old_error_handler = set_error_handler("ErrorHandler");// other php code?>
The only way to generate a blank page with this code is when you have a error in the shutdown handler. I copied and pasted this from my own cms without testing it, but I am sure it works.