Validating PHP code -- How to?

PHPBuilder_com

An app we are building allows the client to upload PHP files.

After the file is uploaded, we want the app to be able to test that the uploaded PHP code works (at least that it does not cause any runtime errors).

I know that with Perl this can be done... that is that you can test that the syntax of the Perl code is correct. IE:

eval ($data);
die("Perl code may contain errors. Debug - $@") if($@);

(where $data contains the contents of the file and $@ is the Perl shorthand for error message)

Can this sort of thing be done with PHP? I've looked into eval and trapping any error messages using the "@" symbol -- no luck.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas?

Cheers

FrozNic

i think this might be what you're looking for...

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.set-error-handler.php

PHPBuilder_com

Although your suggestion looked promising, I am unable to get it to work the way I would like (even after following the PHP manual's example).

Basically, I am looking for something that can parse an included file to test it for failure.

Ideally the process would look like:

$pass_or_fail = test_the_file_for_errors($file_path);
print "PHP syntax error" if($pass_or_fail == 'fail');
print "PHP syntax has passed inspection" if($pass_or_fail != 'fail');

Does such a thing exist? You would think that eval(); would be the ideal function to return a pass/fail result on any PHP code passed through it. But unfortunately, it doesn't. Yet.

jayc

Maybe run the stand alone php interpreter and examine its output?