symfony 1.4: How to pass exception message to error.html.php?

Question

I tried using special variable $message described here http://www.symfony-project.org/cookbook/1_2/en/error_templates but it seems this variable isn't defined in symfony 1.4, at least it doesn't contain message passed to exception this way throw new sfException('some message')

Do you know other way to pass this message to error.html.php ?

Answer 1

You'll need to do some custom error handling. We implemented a forward to a custom symfony action ourselves. Be cautious though, this action itself could be triggering an exception too, you need to take that into account.

The following might be a good start. First add a listener for the event, a good place would be ProjectConfiguration.class.php:

$this->dispatcher->connect('application.throw_exception', array('MyClass', 'handleException'));

Using the event handler might suffice for what you want to do with the exception, for example if you just want to mail a stack trace to the admin. We wanted to forward to a custom action to display and process a feedback form. Our event handler looked something like this:

class MyClass {
  public static function handleException(sfEvent $event) {
    $moduleName = sfConfig::get('sf_error_500_module', 'error');
    $actionName = sfConfig::get('sf_error_500_action', 'error500');
    sfContext::getInstance()->getRequest()->addRequestParameters(array('exception' => $event->getSubject()));
    $event->setReturnValue(true);
    sfContext::getInstance()->getController()->forward($moduleName, $actionName);
  }
}

You can now configure the module and action to forward to on an exception in settings.yml

all:
  .actions:
    error_500_module:       error
    error_500_action:       error500

In the action itself you can now do whatever you want with the exception, eg. display the feedback form to contact the administrator. You can get the exception itself by using $request->getParameter('exception')

Answer 2

I think I found a much simpler answer. On Symfony 1.4 $message is indeed not defined, but $exception is (it contains the exception object).

So just echo $exception->message.

Et voilà!