How do I get PHP errors to display?

Question

I have checked my PHP ini file (php.ini) and display_errors is set and also error reporting is E_ALL. I have restarted my Apache webserver.

I have even put these lines at the top of my script, and it doesn't even catch simple parse errors. For example, I declare variables with a "$" and I don't close statements";". But all my scripts show a blank page on these errors, but I want to actually see the errors in my browser output.

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

What is left to do?

Answer 1

This always works for me:

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

However, this doesn't make PHP to show parse errors - the only way to show those errors is to modify your php.ini with this line:

display_errors = on 

(if you don't have access to php.ini, then putting this line in .htaccess might work too):

php_flag display_errors 1 

Answer 2

You can't catch parse errors when enabling error output at runtime, because it parses the file before actually executing anything (and since it encounters an error during this, it won't execute anything). You'll need to change the actual server configuration so that display_errors is on and the approriate error_reporting level is used. If you don't have access to php.ini, you may be able to use .htaccess or similar, depending on the server.

This question may provide additional info.