how to successfully turn off error reporting to avoid annoyig undefined index errors

marcnyc

Hello, after moving to a new server with PHP 5 I am getting some undefined index errors I didn't get on my old server PHP4.
Since I don't have time to fix them all right now, I'd like to turn off error reporting for the undefined index errors only.
I can't seem to do that.
I inserted this error_reporting(0); in the index page but I still get them.
Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks a lot.

devinemke

this works on my box:

error_reporting(0);

$array['one'] = 'test';
echo $array['two'];

by "works" i mean it does not display an error.

my box:
WinXP
Apache 2.2.2
PHP 5.1.6

NogDog

You can do this if you still want to see more serious errors:

error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);

marcnyc

yes, I am aware of that. in fact that is what I wanted to do, but I restorted to try the error_reporting(0); because error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE); still showed me notices. Basically both don't seem to hide these annoying errors.
Is there a way the server is configured not to listen to these commands and just bypass and go with PHP's default all errors showing policy?

NogDog

I'm not aware of any such "ignore error_reporting()" setting, other than the fact that if it's a parse error the error_reporting() setting will not yet be in effect (because it hasn't actually been executed yet). Perhaps that's the case with undefined indexes?

marcnyc

I wouldn't think so, but I am not an expert

marcnyc

any other ideas? I am a little bit at a loss here with this

MarkR

By and large, you should write code which doesn't generate notices at all during normal operation.

Usually the way of doing this is by judicious use of (e.g.) isset(), but also occasional careful use of "@" operator (Beware: never call functions with @).

Having error_reporting set to 0 (which is what @ does temporarily) is very dangerous and annoying, because it disables all error reporting, including fatals.

Therefore if a fatal occurs, the script terminates unceremoniously with no error, and there's no easy way of finding out what the problem was.

In my opinion, PHP should not allow you to mask fatals; it is of absolutely no practical value.

Specifically, either a function or method call generates a fatal if that function / method is not defined - but this happens at runtime not compile time, so it will only occur if that code is actually hit.

I normally run all my applications with an error handler which terminates the script and logs the error, for all non-masked errors including E_NOTICE. This helps to detect errors early and prevent PHP from "charging headlong into oblivion" under unexpected conditions, e.g. if an expected POST parameter is missing, it will fail the script rather than proceeding with an undefined value.

Mark

marcnyc

I agree of course.
I know I should have coded better, but this was years ago and you learn a lot during years...
Now my priority is getting the code to produce error-free pages for end-users. I will then later on address all these issues.
I just want to turn off error handling for notices right now.

bradgrafelman

Use [man]ini_set[/man] to turn off display_errors?

At any rate, I would say stop fighting error reporting and fix the errors 😉

MarkR

You can't mask your "unimportant" notices while keeping the "important" ones. I recommend that unless your application is of mammoth size, you simply do a reasonable QA exercise, going through suppressing the unwanted notices on a case-by-case basis.

You should be able to do this on your dev server easily if you install an error handler which shouts and screams blue murder on every notice, dumping the stack trace etc, stopping execution.

It should then be straightforward to find most of them through normal testing.

Mark

marcnyc

MarkR wrote:
By and large, you should write code which doesn't generate notices at all during normal operation.

Usually the way of doing this is by judicious use of (e.g.) isset(), but also occasional careful use of "@" operator (Beware: never call functions with @).

I made some time today to take care of the code and write it nicely to avoid those notices...
I have a question about coding:

if I have, say:

if ( $_SESSION["logged"] == 1 ) {
		return '  .: '.$_SESSION["user"].' ';
}

is it sufficient to add isset() around the variable?

	if ( isset($_SESSION["logged"]) == 1 ) {
		return '  .: '.$_SESSION["user"].' ';
	}

or do I have to do it in two steps?

if ( isset($_SESSION["logged"]) && $_SESSION["logged"] == 1 ) {
		return '  .: '.$_SESSION["user"].' ';
}

Thanks a lot

marcnyc

should I have posted this in "CODING" board?

lozza1978

Hi There,

session_start();
if ( $_SESSION["logged"] == 1 ) { 
        return '  .: '.$_SESSION["user"].' '; 
}

would produce,
Notice: Undefined index: logged in C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\errors.php on line 3.

if ( isset($_SESSION["logged"]) == 1 ) { 
        return '  .: '.$_SESSION["user"].' '; 
    }

the code above will produce.
Notice: Undefined index: user in C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\errors.php on line 4

if ( isset($_SESSION["logged"]) && $_SESSION["logged"] == 1 ) { 
        return '  .: '.$_SESSION["user"].' '; 
}

Will work as expected an not produce errors.

hope this helps.

lozza

marcnyc

so in other words, two steps is the way to go...
thanks

lozza1978

yes mate.. the 3rd option will not produce errors.