error logs

themanwhowas

hello.
i am using a web host to serve my website. currently they have error logs turned off (it's a shared hosting plan so i assume this is to stop me from seeing all of the other websites errors). using the ini_set() function, can i have an error log set up? i checked the php manual at php.net but this just confused me terribly. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. 🙂

NogDog

You could do something like this:

<?php
ini_set('error_log', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/errors/' . basename(__FILE__) . '.log');
ini_set('log_errors', 1);

You'll have to make sure the target directory has write access by your PHP scripts (probably 777).

NogDog

Ignore...hit 'reply' instead of 'edit'

Jack_McSlay

yep, the aforementioned idea seems to be the solution

if all else fails, try creating a custom error handler with set_error_handler() which will add info to an error log for you. Personally I prefer the latter, because you can include extra info that is helpful on debugging such as the info received through $GET and $POST and other info about your app in specific

bradgrafelman

NogDog wrote:
You could do something like this:
<?php
ini_set('error_log', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/errors/' . basename(__FILE__) . '.log');
ini_set('log_errors', 1);
You'll have to make sure the target directory has write access by your PHP scripts (probably 777).

And, if you can use a .htaccess file, you can use the "auto_prepend_file" directive in PHP to automatically prepend the above code to all scripts.

EDIT: Also, a CHMOD of 766 would be all that's needed, really.

NogDog

bradgrafelman wrote:
EDIT: Also, a CHMOD of 766 would be all that's needed, really.

I think you need execute on directories as well as write permission, so the directory would need 777, though the log file itself would only need 666. (My UNIX book is at the bottom of a box right now, though, so that's from a potentially faulty memory. 😉 )

MarkR

Unfortunately you can't set an error handler which will catch compile errors - this is a problem.

To catch compile errors you'll need error logging enabled in php.ini - if you don't have sufficient control to modify that, you may be able to get them to set it up at the virtual host level, or use .htaccess.

Of course compile errors shouldn't happen in a production environment anyway, as you'll catch them all in development (Your deployment process does run php -l against every script, right?)

Mark

wilku

MarkR: do you have any script, that would do this, already written? Well I haven't heard of that step before and it seams quite important 🙂

wilku

I was so interested in the idea of pre-deployment checking, that I created my own script (in php) for doing this. And it already found some errors in my more then 250 files project, that I overlooked. Fortunately for my self-pride it isn't in a file written by me, but my co-worker 😉
Here's the script. It uses some functions I found in php manual for readdir:

<?php 
	ini_set('max_execution_time',0);

$allowed_types = array('php','php3');
$counter = 0;
?>
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 //EN">
<html>
<head>
       <title>Before-deployment syntax checker</title>
       <style type="text/css">
       	.no_error {
       		color:black;
       		margin-left:10px;
       	}
       	.error {
       		color:red;
       		margin-left:30px;
       	}
	   </style>
</head>
<body>
<?php
if (!isset($_POST['path']))
{
	echo '<form action="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'" method="post">
		Provide your local path to directory, you want to check your php files 
		in (without trailing slash): <br>
		<input type="text" name="path">
		<input type="submit" name="form_submitted" value="Submit">
	</form> ';	
}
else
{
	$path = $_POST['path'];
	echo "Trying path $path:<br>";
	if (is_dir($path))
	{
		$result = ProcessDir(filearray($path.'/'));
		echo "<br><br>Processed $counter files<br>";
		if ($result) echo "<div class=\"no_error\">All files passed the test.</div>";
		else echo "<div class=\"error\">There were some errors</div>";
	}
	else exit ("$path doesn't exist.");
}
?>
<a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>">Start from the beginning.</a>
</body>
</html>
<?php 
function filearray($start="/") {
	$output=array();
	$getit=array();
  $dir=opendir($start);
  while (false !== ($found=readdir($dir))) { $getit[]=$found; }
  foreach($getit as $num => $item) {
   if (is_dir($start.$item) && $item!="." && $item!="..") { 
	   $output["{$item}"]=filearray($start.$item."/"); 
	}
   if (is_file($start.$item)) { $output["$start$item"]="FILE"; }
  }
  closedir($dir);
  return $output;
}
function file_type($file){
       $path_chunks = explode("/", $file);
       $thefile = $path_chunks[count($path_chunks) - 1];
       $dotpos = strrpos($thefile, ".");
       return strtolower(substr($thefile, $dotpos + 1));
   }

function ProcessDir($file_array)
{
	static $ok = true;
	global $allowed_types;
	global $counter;
	foreach ($file_array as $name=>$item)
	{
		if (is_array($item)) ProcessDir($item);
		else
		{
			if (in_array(file_type($name),$allowed_types))
			{
				$counter++;
				$res_arr = array();
				$result = exec("php -l \"$name\"",$res_arr);
				if (strpos($result,"No syntax errors")!==false) echo "<div class=\"no_error\">$result</div>";
				else
				{
					$ok = false;
					echo "<div class=\"error\">";
					foreach ($res_arr as $line) echo $line.'<br>';
					echo "</div>";
				}
			}
		}
	}
	return $ok;
}
?>

MarkR

Yes, I have the rather more concise:

#!/bin/sh

# Ignore files in directories called tmp
FILES=`find site -name \*php ! -wholename \*tmp\*`
echo "Checking PHP syntax..."

for file in $FILES; do
        php -d display_errors=1 -d error_reporting=4095 -l $file |grep -v "No syntax errors"
done

echo "Finished."

Note that I'm ignoring things in "tmp", which is where Smarty stores its compiled templates (Checking these I deemed unncessary, however checking smarty templates for syntax would be a good idea to do anyway).

Mark

wilku

I have to use Windows based development environment and server (because one of the applications is written in asp). 🙁