How can I get php to return 500 upon encountering a fatal exception?

Question

PHP fatal errors come back as status code 200 to the HTTP client. How can I make it return a status code 500 (Internal server error)?

Answer 1

Never forget to set header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK", true, 200); as the last line of any execution path:

//first things first:
header("HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error", true, 500);


//Application code, includes, requires, etc. [...]


//somewhere something happens
//die();
throw new Exception("Uncaught exception!");


//last things last, only reached if code execution was not stopped by uncaught exception or some fatal error
header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK", true, 200);

In PHP 5.4 you can replace the header function above with the much better http_response_code(200) or http_response_code(500).

Answer 2

The hard thing when dealing with fatal errors (compile errors, for example a missing semicolon) is that the script won't be executed, so it won't help to set the status code in that script. However, when you include or require a script, the calling script will be executed, regardless of errors in the included script. With this, I come to this solution:

rock-solid-script.php:

// minimize changes to this script to keep it rock-solid
http_response_code(500); // PHP >= 5.4
require_once("script-i-want-to-guard-for-errors.php");

script-i-want-to-guard-for-errors.php:

// do all the processsing
// don't produce any output
// you might want to use output buffering

http_response_code(200); // PHP >= 5.4

// here you can produce the output

Direct your call to the rock-solid-script.php and you're ready to go.

I would have liked it better to set the default status code to 500 in .htaccess. That seems more elegant to me but I can't find a way to pull it off. I tried the RewriteRule R-flag, but this prevents execution of php altogether, so that's no use.

Answer 3

I have used "set_exception_handler" to handle uncaught exceptions.

function handleException($ex) {
      error_log("Uncaught exception class=" . get_class($ex) . " message=" . $ex->getMessage() . " line=" . $ex->getLine());
      ob_end_clean(); # try to purge content sent so far
      header('HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error');
      echo 'Internal error';
    }

set_exception_handler('handleException');

Answer 4

header("HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error");