Question

I’m developing a very simple but (hopefully) solid framework that just fits my needs. No more things then the really needed one.
I know that someone of you might find me the last “re inventor of the wheel”, but I believe in this project and I think that other framework are complex for no reason some times; and we all know that bugs and errors grow exponentially as the framework complexity.

I came to the problem of handling errors: PHP errors, framework errors (PHP errors group) etc.
There are a lot of ways to do that but I usually prefer the simple one.

Should I manage all the PHP errors that can occur during the initialization of the framework with Exceptions or set_error_handler() or should I build a simple error handler that show (if we are in developer mode) or log (if we are not in developer mode) the errors?

For example:

include('file.php'); // required files for the application

should I check for it and return “nice looking” error messages such as “The framework cannot run because a file is missing”. Or should I let PHP error trigger its own error?
How would you manage this type or errors?

Answer 1

Look, you are just mixing the matters.

There are actually two persons you have to notify

1. A programmer
2. A user.

Understanding that, you will see that there is no problem what to choose: both.

For the programmer, the default PHP handler is enough. Driven with display_errors and log_errors settings PHP will do exactly what you want: show (if we are in developer mode) or log (if we are not in developer mode) the errors.

For the user (and a search engine) a “nice looking” 503 error page is obligatory.
Of course, without whatever details like “file is missing”. Just an apology page.

The only question is how to trigger that.
A good reason to make use of a custom error handler.