Write to error log with local time information and a line break at the end

Question

I need to write the local time information , the exception message to a php log file. I don't know why I can't get the format correct. The script I use is this:

  error_log('['.date("F j, Y, g:i a").']'.$msg." <br>", 3,  $phperrorPath);

There are two problem with this:

1. The date is not written in local time, instead it's default to the GMT+0 time; I want to write the machine time information to the log
2. After the file is written, it's not break to another line.

How to modify this code?

Answer 1

Set your local time using date_default_timezone_set:

date_default_timezone_set('UTC');

Adding the e and O format parameters to the date call will give you the timezone identifier and GMT offset:

date("F j, Y, g:i a e O")

Add a "\n" to the end of the string:

//I've left in the HTML line break
error_log('['.date("F j, Y, g:i a e O").']'.$msg."<br /> \n", 3,  $phperrorPath); 

Lines will not be concatenated when using "3" as the second argument to error_log, and using "0" will write the output to the default location specified in php.ini. "2" is no longer an option, so I think manually concatenating the line break is the way to go. See:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.error-log.php

Also, take a look at localtime

Answer 2

As for "2" I suspect that is because you are using the HTML formatting line break
instead of the file line break \n. Maybe that's worth a try.

Answer 3

Try using:

date_default_timezone_set('MYT');

That will set the script's timezone to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (that's your profile's country).

Then use:

error_log('['.date("F j, Y, g:i a e O").']'.$msg."<br />\r\n",3,$phperrorPath);

I don't know if you want to leave the <br /> HTML tag there, so I left it there.