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Basic Error Handling in PHP

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The .htaccess File

4:52 with Alena Holligan

Especially on a shared server, you don't always have access to modify the php.ini file. Using a .htaccess file will allow you to set error level at a directory level and also show parse errors, which stop a php script from processing.

The .htaccess file, as mentioned in Before You Start, is only applicable for locally hosted servers or a hosting server you have access to. If you'd like to follow along, make sure that you are developing using a local PHP Dev Environment.

WARNING! Be careful that your error handling does not get pushed to production.


.htaccess File Settings

php_flag display_startup_errors on
php_flag display_errors on
php_value error_reporting -1
php_flag html_errors on

How to show hidden files in Mac OS X

The Terminal application is the best way to display hidden files in Mac OS X. The Terminal app enables you to control Mac OS X using the command line to enter Unix commands. We like to think of Terminal as the hood of a car; it allows you to open Mac OS X up and look inside.

  1. Open Terminal (click Go > Utilities and double-click the Terminal app)

  2. Now copy and paste both lines listed below into Terminal one at a time, and press Return after each line:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
killall Finder

How to show hidden files on Windows

  1. Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.
  2. Click the View tab.
  3. Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files, folders, and drives, and then click OK.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/show-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-vista/

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    An htaccess file allows you to change the configuration of your server 0:00
    at a directory level. 0:05
    This is often the best choice when on a shared server 0:07
    where you don't have access to the php.ini file. 0:10
    This will overwrite what's in your php.ini file or other configuration files. 0:14
    We can use this to turn on, off, or change the level of errors to display. 0:19
    Keep in mind .htaccess files are hidden files and 0:25
    can sometimes be tricky to work with. 0:29
    If you're not sure how to work with hidden files, check the teachers' notes for 0:31
    more information. 0:35
    If you are using this method, you should be aware 0:37
    that the htaccess file is often used for other things such as redirection. 0:40
    It is also another file used right along 0:45
    with the rest of the files on your application. 0:48
    Because of these concerns you should be careful about 0:51
    committing this file to your version control system. 0:54
    Most likely, you do not want the same settings on dev and production. 0:57
    Let's go into work spaces and see the htaccess file in action. 1:02
    One of the things I have included in this project are a couple error pages. 1:07
    To start with, let's preview errors1.php. 1:11
    Click the preview icon that looks like an eye in the top right corner. 1:14
    Preview always takes us to the default page of our project. 1:19
    If there is no default page, it gives us a list of pages. 1:24
    We can click on errors1.php. 1:28
    We'll see that all we get is a blank white page, not very helpful. 1:32
    And if we go to errors2.php it gives us a server error. 1:37
    Again, no help. 1:41
    Let's go into the htaccess file and turn on errors. 1:43
    In workspaces we can't edit an htaccess file directly, 1:49
    because it doesn't understand the .htaccess as a file extension. 1:53
    But if we rename it briefly to htaccess.txt, 1:58
    then we can open the file, edit it, end then rename it back. 2:01
    Because Workspaces is set up as a development environment, 2:14
    it is set to display all errors by default. 2:17
    We're using the htaccess file to turn off the errors. 2:20
    In the htaccess file that's included in Workspace, you'll see quite a few lines. 2:24
    All the lines that start with a pound sign are just comments 2:29
    telling you what's going on. 2:33
    So there are really only four lines of actual code. 2:34
    This is not PHP code. 2:38
    The htaccess file is a configuration file for Apache, our web server. 2:40
    We'll step through each line. 2:45
    The first line tells our server, Apache, to display startup errors. 2:48
    Our second line tells our server to display all other errors. 2:53
    The third line specifies reporting of all PHP errors. 2:58
    And the fourth line turns on HTML markup of errors making them easier to read. 3:03
    If you want to go into this in a little more depth check out the teacher's notes. 3:10
    We'll change all of the off to on. 3:16
    We'll also change error_reporting to minus one. 3:25
    That means everything. 3:29
    If we save this file we can then rename it. 3:31
    Back to .htaccess. 3:40
    Now we can refresh our browser to see our parse error. 3:43
    It tells us that there's an unexpected closing curly brace at line nine. 3:47
    It's expecting a comma or a semicolon. 3:52
    Let's go check it out. 3:56
    Errors two on line nine. 3:59
    Because of the way PHP pretty much ignores whitespace, it doesn't actually generate 4:03
    an error until it encounters something that is incorrect. 4:08
    So we need to look at the line directly before line nine. 4:11
    Since line eight is a blank line, that means we want line seven. 4:16
    We can see that we are indeed missing a semicolon. 4:21
    Let's fix that. 4:24
    Now let's refresh our browser. 4:29
    Awesome. 4:32
    No more errors. 4:33
    We'll fix our other page in the next video. 4:35
    If you don't have access to your server this is often your best option. 4:38
    Just be careful that your development settings do not get pushed to production. 4:42
    This brings us to our third option, your own PHP code. 4:48

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