Can I try/catch a warning?

Question

I need to catch some warnings being thrown from some php native functions and then handle them.

Specifically:

array dns_get_record  ( string $hostnam         


        

Answer 1

Set and restore error handler

One possibility is to set your own error handler before the call and restore the previous error handler later with restore_error_handler().

set_error_handler(function() { /* ignore errors */ });
dns_get_record();
restore_error_handler();

You could build on this idea and write a re-usable error handler that logs the errors for you.

set_error_handler([$logger, 'onSilencedError']);
dns_get_record();
restore_error_handler();

Turning errors into exceptions

You can use set_error_handler() and the ErrorException class to turn all php errors into exceptions.

set_error_handler(function($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline, $errcontext) {
    // error was suppressed with the @-operator
    if (0 === error_reporting()) {
        return false;
    }

    throw new ErrorException($errstr, 0, $errno, $errfile, $errline);
});

try {
    dns_get_record();
} catch (ErrorException $e) {
    // ...
}

The important thing to note when using your own error handler is that it will bypass the error_reporting setting and pass all errors (notices, warnings, etc.) to your error handler. You can set a second argument on set_error_handler() to define which error types you want to receive, or access the current setting using ... = error_reporting() inside the error handler.

Suppressing the warning

Another possibility is to suppress the call with the @ operator and check the return value of dns_get_record() afterwards. But I'd advise against this as errors/warnings are triggered to be handled, not to be suppressed.

Answer 2

Normaly you should never use @ unless this is the only solution. In that specific case the function dns_check_record should be use first to know if the record exists.

Answer 3

Combining these lines of code around a file_get_contents() call to an external url helped me handle warnings like "failed to open stream: Connection timed out" much better:

set_error_handler(function ($err_severity, $err_msg, $err_file, $err_line, array $err_context)
{
    throw new ErrorException( $err_msg, 0, $err_severity, $err_file, $err_line );
}, E_WARNING);
try {
    $iResult = file_get_contents($sUrl);
} catch (Exception $e) {
    $this->sErrorMsg = $e->getMessage();
}
restore_error_handler();

This solution works within object context, too. You could use it in a function:

public function myContentGetter($sUrl)
{
  ... code above ...
  return $iResult;
}

Answer 4

The solution that really works turned out to be setting simple error handler with E_WARNING parameter, like so:

set_error_handler("warning_handler", E_WARNING);
dns_get_record(...)
restore_error_handler();

function warning_handler($errno, $errstr) { 
// do something
}

Answer 5

You should probably try to get rid of the warning completely, but if that's not possible, you can prepend the call with @ (i.e. @dns_get_record(...)) and then use any information you can get to figure out if the warning happened or not.