Laravel Error: Method Illuminate\View\View::__toString() must not throw an exception

Question

Have you seen this lovely error while working in Laravel?

Method Illuminate\View\View::__toString() must not throw an exception

I have seen it and it's incredibly annoying. I have found out two reasons why this error gets thrown. I just want to help people not take hours and hours of time.

View answers & situations below. :)

Answer 1

There is a very simple solution: don't cast View object to a string.

Don't: echo View::make('..'); or echo view('..');

Do: echo View::make('..')->render(); or echo view('..')->render();

For PHP version <7.4 By casting view, it uses __toString() method automatically, which cannot throw an exception. If you call render() manually, exceptions are handled normally. This is the case if there is an error in the view - laravel throws an exception.

It's fixed in PHP >=7.4 you should not encounter this issue: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/tostring_exceptions.

For PHP version <7.4: This actually is a PHP limitation, not Laravels. Read more about this "feature" here: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53648

Answer 2

Situation 1: Trying to print out a value in an array.

Answer 1: Try printing out the array. Are you sure it's an array? I've gotten this error when it was an object instead of an array. Try doing a print_r and seeing what you get.

Situation 2: You have this associated array like this:

Array
    (
        [post_id] => 65
        [post_text] => Multiple Images!
        [created_at] => 2014-10-23 09:16:46
        [updated_on] => 
        [post_category] => stdClass Object
            (
                [category_label] => Help Wanted
                [category_code] => help_wanted
            )

        [employee_full_name] => Sam Jones
        [employee_pic] => /images/employee-image-placeholder.png
        [employee_email] => [email protected]
        [post_images] => Array
            (
                [0] => stdClass Object
                    (
                        [image_path] => 9452photo_2.JPG
                    )

                [1] => stdClass Object
                    (
                        [image_path] => 8031photo_3.JPG
                    )

            )

    )

When you try to access post_images array directly within a View, it throws an error. No. Matter. What. You. Do.

Answer 2: Check in all the places where you are calling the View. What happened here is that I was trying to access the same view somewhere else in an area where I wasn't giving the post_images array. Took FOREVER to figure out.

I hope this helps someone else. :) I just know the error I kept getting didn't help me anywhere.