Full On Design

Handling Errors In PHP

About the Author

Mike Rogers is a Web Developer who is currently at University studying Web Technologies. He also is the founder of Full On Design. He has several years experience freelancing and you can follow him on Twitter (Rogem002).

Handling errors in PHP can be quite a handful at times. Here is a really simple PHP class which I use to manage errors:

<?php
/*
errors class - Helps management of errors in a script.

@version
	1.0
@author
	Mike Rogers (FullOnDesin.co.uk)
@last updated
	03 June 2009
@usage
	You are free to share, modify and use this code for commercial or non-commercial uses.
	Please give a link back (to http://www.fullondesign.co.uk/ ) if you can, but you don't have you.
	You use this at your own risk.
*/
class errors {
	var $errors_data;

	/*
	Add the error from $new_error into an array of errors.

	@param
		$new_error	string The text related to your error.
	@return:
		True - Error has been Added
	@example
		add_error('Username is Incorrect');
	*/
	public function add_error($new_error){
		$this->errors_data[] = $new_error;
		return TRUE;
	}

	/*
		Outputs the errors.

	@param
		None
	@return:
		- A div (ID - error) which contains the errors.
		NULL - No errors
	@example
		echo output_errors();
	*/
	public function output_errors(){
		if(is_array($this->errors_data)){
			// Cycle through the errors.
			foreach($this->errors_data as $error)	{
				$return .= '<p>'.$error.'</p>';
			}
		// Add it to the error div
		return '<div id="error">'.$return.'</div>';
		}
		return NULL;
	}
}

// @Example - creating the class:
$errors = new errors;

// @Example - Add an error
$errors->add_error('Username is incorrect');

// @Example - Return the errors
echo $errors->output_errors();
?>

If you are looking to fully integrate a script similar to the above, there is a really good post regarding the set_error_handler() function on Tinsology ( PHP Error Handling ).

Posted June 3rd, 2009