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

Answer 2

Init following function inside your php file.

register_shutdown_function('mail_on_error'); //inside your php script

/** If  any file having any kind of fatal error, sln team will be notified when cron will
become fail : following is the name of handler and its type
E_ERROR: 1 | E_WARNING: 2 | E_PARSE: 4 | E_NOTICE: 8
*/

function mail_on_error() {
    global $objSettings;

    $error = error_get_last();
    //print_r($error);    

  if ($error['type'] == 1) {

        // update file path into db
        $objSettings->update_records($id=1,array('fatal_error' => json_encode($error)));

        $exception_in_file_path = __FILE__;
        fatal_error_structure($exception_in_file_path);

  }// end if

}// end mail_on_error

fatal_error_structure should be defined on some global location. like function.inc.php. This will send an email to registered user.

function fatal_error_structure($exception_in_file_path){

        $subject = "FATAL: Cron Daemon has failed";

    sln_send_mail(nl2br("Please check $exception_in_file_path, This cron having FATAL error."), 
        $subject, '[e-mail]',$name_reciever='', 'text/plain');

}// end fatal_error_structure

Answer 3

Alerternatively you can use (if you have shell access) a log watcher shell script. This allows to catch any error, including parse errors (which you cannot catch with register_shutdown_function).

#!/bin/bash
tail -f /path_to_error_log/php_error.log|while read LINE;do
if grep -q "PHP (Parse|Fatal) error" <(echo $LINE); then
(
echo "From: [e-mail]"
echo "To: [e-mail]"
echo "Subject: PHP Error"
echo $LINE
) | sendmail -t
fi
done

This is imho more harmless because this is just a side process, and allows you to rely on other technology (shell script or whatever), in case errors happen because of php environment itself, you will still be notified.

Answer 4

Take a look at this

If you where to set your error reporting to something like

error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_PARSE | E_NOTICE | E_COMPILE_WARNING | E_COMPILE_ERROR);

Then the hope would be that it would pick up the above problems.