How to email PHP Fatal Errors only?

Question

I am in the middle of refining a rather large bit of code. Alot of it contains many general warnings and notices which do not affect the execution of the code (ie: undefined varilables, or array keys without qoutes).

I want to write a function which allows me to concentrate on the fatal errors first and then I will open it up to the less urgent warnings and notices. I found this code, but it emails every little warning notice and error.

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/quick-tip-email-error-logs-to-yourself-with-php/

How can I modify this code so it only deals with things like:

• fatal syntax errors
• undefined functions
• failure to include files

Answer 1

set_error_handler allows you to specify a user-defined error handling function for deciding what to do with certain (but only non-fatal) errors. You can then handle specific types of errors in any fashion you deem necessary, for example notifying a system administrator via email, or saving to a specific log file. See: PHP Doc for further details.

With regards to your request you could the following approach:

function myErrorHandler($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline)
{
  if (!(error_reporting() & $errno)) {
    // This error code is not included in error_reporting
    return;
  }

  switch ($errno) {
    case E_USER_ERROR:
    case E_ERROR:
    case E_COMPILE_ERROR:
      echo "<b>My ERROR</b> [$errno] $errstr<br />\n";
      echo "  Fatal error on line $errline in file $errfile";
      echo ", PHP " . PHP_VERSION . " (" . PHP_OS . ")<br />\n";
      echo "Aborting...<br />\n";
      emailErrorFunction($errno,$erstr,$errfile,$errline);
      exit(1);
      break;

  default:
      echo "Unknown error type: [$errno] $errstr<br />\n";
      break;
  }

/* Don't execute PHP internal error handler */
  return true;
}
// Report all errors
error_reporting(E_ALL);
// User a custom error handler to print output
set_error_handler( 'myErrorHandler' );

As that error-handling does not work for Fatal Errors (Parse errors, undefined functions etc.), you need to tape this with register_shutdown_function as outlined in a related question:

• How do I catch a PHP Fatal Error