Logging

Displaying errors to the screen during development is just the first step. 0:00 The developer won't always run across every possible error. 0:05 And what about errors that happen in production? 0:09 That's where logging comes in. 0:11 Like other error settings, 0:14 ideally your logging should be set in your php.ini file. 0:15 However, you can change these settings with the htaccess file or, 0:19 in a specific PHP file as well. 0:25 Although this is not ideal, you can use the INI set function 0:28 in your PHP file to set the configuration option for logging errors. 0:33 It's not an ideal solution, because it will not log any 0:38 errors if the script has parse errors and cannot be run at all. 0:42 Let's see this in action. 0:47 I've turned errors back on in the .htaccess file. 0:49 Open logging.php. 0:53 At the top of the file we have some log options using the ini_set functions. 0:54 Log_errors is set to 1. 1:00 And error_log is set to php-error.txt. 1:03 I'm using .txt for error_log so we can view this file in workspaces. 1:06 When we view this script in a browser, we can see our parse error, but 1:12 when we go back to work spaces we don't have any error logs. 1:17 That's because parse errors won't work. 1:22 PHP will never read this line that tells it where error log should be. 1:25 If we fix the parse error but leave a syntax error, 1:30 you'll see the error logs on the screen and also written to our log. 1:32 Let's fix the parse error but leave the syntax error. 1:38 Now when we preview it in the browser, we see an error on the screen. 1:44 It should also write to our error log. 1:49 Great. 1:56 The notice and the warning are in our error log. 1:57 If we don't have access to the php.ini file, 2:00 the next best option is usually the htaccess file. 2:04 This is a better option because it will log the errors, 2:07 even if there's a parse error in your script. 2:10 Let's put our parse error back in, then modify our htaccess file. 2:13 We want to turn on log errors. 2:32 We use php_value 2:34 log_errors 1. 2:39 We also need our log file for errors. 2:44 Php_value error_log 2:49 php-error.txt. 2:54 Let's rename our file again. 3:07 And now when we preview the browser, we see our parse error. 3:12 And if we go back to our PHP errors, we now see our parse error is logged as well. 3:19 This by no means covers error handling completely. 3:26 I trust that it's given you enough to get you started with this 3:30 important part of development. 3:33 You should now know how to display and log errors. 3:35 Proper error handling makes it easier to track down errors and 3:39 get your code up and running. 3:43 I've included more information on error and exception handling. 3:45 As well as debugging in the teacher's notes. 3:49 Have fun and keep learning. 3:51