Category: PHP

Advanced Error Handling in PHP (Part 2)

Explore advanced techniques for error handling in PHP including exceptions, custom error handlers, and best practices in Part 2 of this series.

Now that we know, how to log errors in any system developed in PHP, we can move to our next section for keeping track of these logged errors. If you haven’t read how to log errors, read part 1 of error handling in PHP.

To keep track of these logged errors, we need to create a script to read those log files in a systematic way. Refer to the below code to read log files,

public function errorLogs($filePath = 'error.log') {

        $fileContent = file($filePath);

        $errorsArray = array();
        if(sizeof($fileContent) == 0) {
            return false;
        }

        foreach($fileContent as $row) {
            $errors = explode(":  ", $row);

            if(empty($errors[1])) continue;
            $errorsArray[] = $errors;
        }

        return array_reverse($errorsArray, true);
}

Explanation:

$fileContent = file($filePath);

This line of code will read the file line by line from the provided file path.

if(sizeof($fileContent) == 0) {
    return false;
}

After reading the file, if the size of the file content is 0 then, the function will return false. So, the purpose of this function is to stop the execution of the function if the provided file is empty and returns false.

foreach($fileContent as $row) {
      $errors = explode(":  ", $row);

      if(empty($errors[1])) continue;
      $errorsArray[] = $errors;
}

This part of the function will loop through the log contents row by row. For each row, it will explode the line with ‘:’ to separate the date and actual error details.

If the error details are empty for any row, it will skip that row. Otherwise, it will collect the errors in another array.

return array_reverse($errorsArray, true);

The last line of the function will reverse the error data and returned the reversed result. So, that we can see the latest errors first.

This way we can create a simple function to display the list of errors in a tabular format from the error log files we generated for each of the modules in the application system.

Beginner’s Guide to Error Handling in PHP – Part 1

Learn the basics of error handling in PHP. Understand types of errors, how to display them, and the use of error_reporting() and ini_set() functions.

Error handling is an important part of any developer as it provides vital flaws about the program developed by the developer. So, it becomes very crucial to learn the techniques to manage it.

As a developer, we have been told that you should not show errors on the production server because of the security risk due to the path displayed by the PHP errors displayed on the screen. So, we add the following code for the production server,

ini_set('error_reporting', 0);
error_reporting(0);

ini_set('display_errors', FALSE);

But, without error logs, developers cannot able to know actual problems or flaws in the system. So, rather than hiding errors, developers should store them in the log files. We can achieve this using the following code,

ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('log_errors', TRUE);
ini_set('html_errors', FALSE);
ini_set('error_log', LOG_PATH.'error.log');
ini_set('display_errors', FALSE);

This way, we can manage error logs and hide errors on the production server. We can manage separate log files for the different modules of the project.

How to Change File Upload Size in Ubuntu via php.ini

Learn how to increase the file upload limit on Ubuntu by editing the php.ini file. Follow this easy guide to update post_max_size and upload_max_filesize.

On Ubuntu server, maximal file size upload limit in php scripts is set to 2Mb as default.  There may be different filesize updated later in php.ini which is not sufficient to upload large database backup in phpMyAdmin.

In order to change that, two things are important,

  • Current upload_max_filesize value
  • Current location of php.ini file

To find current upload_max_filesize value, create a file called ‘pinfo.php’ at your webserver root folder with following content:

phpinfo();

Now, open recently created file in browser via http://localhost/pinfo.php (replace localhost with the servername if necessary) and look for the line

upload_max_filesize 2M

which will show you the actual maximum file size.

To change the upload_max_filesize value, open php.ini file from the location provided in information displayed from pinfo.php file. If php.ini file location is/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini, then open a ssh connection to your server and edit the file /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini as follows

sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

search for “upload_max_filesize” with Ctrl-W and change “2M” to “20M”. Save the file with Ctrl-O and exit with Ctrl-X. Restart the apache server with

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

and visit again http://localhost/info.php to check if the maximum file size was changed.

There is another way to change upload_max_filesize value for specific project or website only.

If you enabled mod_rewrite you can also put this to your .htaccess file:

php_value upload_max_filesize = 16G
php_value post_max_size = 16G

So, upload_max_filesize value in php.ini file can be changed using .htaccess for project specific and from php.ini file itself for whole server specific.