[RESOLVED] PDO always throws an exception even if I specify it to be silent

[Phire]

I believe the default behavior for PDO is to be silent when an error occurs, but is that supposed to mean that it won' t throw an exception? Because there's an attribute setting that does tell it to throw an exception. Regardless of what attribute setting I use, it seems to always throw an exception for new connections. PHP keeps telling me an uncaught an exception was thrown. I'm trying to keep it silent without a try and catch block.

[laserlight]

Let's take a look at what the PHP Manual has to say about PDO::ERRMODE_SILENT

This is the default mode. PDO will simply set the error code for you to inspect using the PDO->errorCode() and PDO->errorInfo() methods on both the statement and database objects; if the error resulted from a call on a statement object, you would invoke the PDOStatement->errorCode() or PDOStatement->errorInfo() method on that object. If the error resulted from a call on the database object, you would invoke those methods on the database object instead.

So, PDO will set the error code, and you can retrieve it using PDO->errorCode() and PDO->errorInfo(). Now, if there is a connection error, you do not have a valid PDO object, so you cannot retrieve the error message using those member functions. Consequently, you should do what the PHP Manual recommends:

If there are any connection errors, a PDOException object will be thrown. You may catch the exception if you want to handle the error condition, or you may opt to leave it for an application global exception handler that you set up via set_exception_handler().

[Phire]

Thanks.

[NogDog]

So I guess as shown in the examples on the PDO->__construct() page, you should always use a try/catch block for your PDO instantiation, e.g.:

try {
    $dbh = new PDO($dsn, $user, $password);
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo 'Connection failed: ' . $e->getMessage();
}