try block not working

It looks like you forgot to include a password for the database user. The root password usually has a password of root.

<?php

try { $db = new PDO("mysql:host=brokenhost;dbname=shirts4mike;port=3306","root","root"); 
} catch (Exception $e) { echo "Could not connect to the database."; exit; };

echo "Woo-hoo!";

Thanks, although including the extra "root" caused an error for me (I don't have a password for this database).

However, this wasn't quite the problem I was concerned with. I do not understand why a PHP error is appearing, as well as my custom exception message. The server should "try" the code to prevent an error showing and then show the custom error message instead.

WAMP on Windows

Can you copy and paste your errors?

Sure Tom, the error message is:

Warning: PDO::__construct(): php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: No such host is known. in C:\wamp\www\shirts4mike\inc\database.php on line 4

And line 4 is:

$db = new PDO("mysql:host=brokenhost;dbname=shirts4mike;port=3306","root");

I've deliberately written "brokenhost" instead of "localhost" to check the error handling - which isn't working because the php error is still showing. The "Could not connect to the database." message is also showing, so the catch clause is working, but the try clause is still running when it should be tried and then if it fails it should not be run and the catch clause should be run instead (if I understand things correctly)

For reference here is the entire code:

<?php

try {
    $db = new PDO("mysql:host=brokenhost;dbname=shirts4mike;port=3306","root");
    $db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE,PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    $db->exec("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo "Could not connect to the database.";
    exit;
}