Exceptions vs PHP Errors

In addition to Laravel/PHP Exceptions, you may also encounter PHP Errors for syntax issues or invalid things:

Or:

What if you want to handle these errors more gracefully? Well, you can manage them as Exceptions!

Examples of PHP Errors

There are a few different things that can cause PHP Errors:

• Typos in code. You want to call auth()->user(), but you accidentally type auth()->user - this will cause an error because you're trying to call a property that does not exist.
• Calling a non-existing function/method. For example, trying to call file_get_content($filename); instead of file_get_contents($filename);.
• Calling a function/method with an invalid number of arguments. For example, trying to call file_get_contents($filename, $context, $offset); instead of file_get_contents($filename);.
• Calling a function/method with invalid argument TYPE. For example, User::create($request) instead of User::create($request->all()).
• Dividing by zero. For example, 10 / 0.

These all cause PHP Errors because they are invalid things to do in PHP. Yet, they will only produce an error if they are executed. So, if you have a typo in your code that is never executed, you will never see the error.

How They Are Different From Exceptions

PHP Errors are different from Exceptions in a few ways:

• PHP Errors are not meant to be handled - they are meant to inform you about broken code.
• PHP Errors should not dictate what is thrown as an Exception - you should throw an Exception when something is wrong with your application, not when something is wrong with PHP.

In short, getting an Exception means that you have something malformed within the logic of your application. Getting a PHP Error means that you have something wrong with the syntax of your application. And that's significantly worse!

Handling PHP Errors as Exceptions

Once you learn about Exceptions and how to handle them with a Try-Catch block - you may want to do the same to prevent PHP errors:

try {
    $this->importData();
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    dd("General Exception: " . $e->getMessage());
}

But this doesn't work as you would expect:

A php Error is not an Exception, so this block will not catch it. Instead, it would be best if you caught it like this:

try {
    $this->importData();
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    dd("General Exception: " . $e->getMessage());
} catch (\Error $e) {
    dd("General error: " . $e->getMessage());
}

That way, you can catch the PHP Error just like an Exception:

It even works for a variety of PHP Errors:

try {
    functionThatDoesntExistYet();
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    dd("General Exception: " . $e->getMessage());
} catch (\Error $e) {
    dd("General error: " . $e->getMessage());
}

You can even catch a specific PHP Error:

public function __invoke() {
    // ...
    try {
        $this->importData(); // <-- We forgot to add $row as a parameter here
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
        dd("General exception: " . $e->getMessage());
    } catch (\ArgumentCountError $e) {
        dd("Argument count error:" . $e->getMessage());
    } catch (\Error $e) {
        dd("General error: " . $e->getMessage());
    }
}
 
public function importData($row)
{
    // ...
}

Running this, we'll see that we caught the specific PHP Error:

You can do this for all the errors in the documentation.

Notice: We only recommend you do this in your application if you understand the implications. It is just an example of how to avoid breaking your application when you encounter a PHP Error.