Question

I have a script with an exception handler. This exception handler cleans up a couple connections, prior to the script exiting after an exception.

I would like to re-throw the exception from this exception handler so that it is handled by PHP’s own last-resort exception handler, where the error is written to PHP’s error log, or whatever the default is, as configured in PHP.ini.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem like a possibility, as outlined here:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.set-exception-handler.php#68712

Will cause a Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame

Is there another way to bubble the error up the stack so that PHP handles it after my exception handler is done cleaning up?

Answer 1

You can not re-throw from the exception handler, however, there are other places you can. For example you can de-couple the re-throw from the handler by encapsulating things into a class of it’s own and then use the __destruct() function (PHP 5.3, Demo):

<?php

class ExceptionHandler
{
    private $rethrow;
    public function __construct()
    {
        set_exception_handler(array($this, 'handler'));
    }
    public function handler($exception)
    {
        echo  "cleaning up.\n";
        $this->rethrow = $exception;
    }
    public function __destruct()
    {
        if ($this->rethrow) throw $this->rethrow;
    }
}

$handler = new ExceptionHandler;

throw new Exception();

Put this into my error log:

[29-Oct-2011 xx:32:25] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' in /.../test-exception.php:23
Stack trace:
#0 {main}
thrown in /.../test-exception.php on line 23