error message by itself

[nmm]

hi,

is there a way to have display error messages on a seperate page instead of mixed up with the outputed html code? Some times when i create datbase driven dropdown menus, i cannot tell an error has occured, because the error gets mixed up with the <select> tag. I have to do a view source to see the error. If an error occurs i would rather just see the error message by itself.

im running php 4.3.2, win xp, iis

Thanks in advance

[erikwebb]

what you can do is insert a '@' before all the function names (silencing any immediate error messages) then use mysql_error() to add errors that have occurred to an array. Then you can print that array out whenever you want.

Hope this helps.

[codeDV]

It's a good idea to disable error handling on all functions which rely on an external resource such as database or a filesystem. You candisable error handling by prefixing an (@) symbol next to your function call.

Most functions which use external resources will return a specific value on faliure such as -1. You can test the functions return value after exectution and determine whether or not an error has occured and take the appropriate action. You can also retrieve the error message text using the $php_errormsg global variable (nb: requires the track_errors directive to be turned on in the PHP ini file).

Below is such an expamle, where by a query is executed on a mySql database:

$result = @mysql_query("SELECT * FROM mytable");

if (! $result) {
  // function failed - do some error handling
}

As you can see the function will return 0 if it fails. Normally it would return a number that can then be used to get more information on the query.

[nmm]

great. Thanks for your help. I will try that out.🙂