PHP Error Aid

What is it?

PEA is a small PHP library to help logging errors. It logs both native PHP errors and PEAR errors, but it does not require PEAR itself (in which case only PHP errors are logged). It only logs to files, but it is effortless to convert it to send logs by mail or the system logger. See error_log.

Features

Since it is a small library, it has not many features, just what is strictly needed. Here are the main features:

• Logging of variable informations according to debug levels.
• Transparent support of PEAR errors.
• Log files are friendly to vim by adding fold markers, for a better log analysis.

This library is mostly useful during website development, where details about the errors are very useful. It can also be helpful in a production environment to monitor the correct behaviour of the application, but only for smaller websites. Bigger projects should implement a smarter logging facility.

Installation instructions

Installation is very simple: copy the errors.php file somewhere in your project, open it for editing and set the correct path to your log file. Please make sure that the destination folder exists, that the logfile itself exists and that the correct permissions are set for writing to the file. Now you simply have to include this file in every script in your project and all the errors will be appended to the specified file.

Warning

You should not put the log file in a folder accessible from the web. Put it in a private area only accessible through ftp (or other authenticated access mechanism). Important details will be written to this file such as passwords and query string, so make sure to keep the logs away from unauthorized people.

Tricks and Tips

To analyze your log files you should be using the VIM editor. Once you have opened the file, go to command mode (ESC) and just type this: :set fdm=marker After you press return, the file should close all the folds in it and give you an overview of what happened. To open a fold to have details, you should move over the fold and (in control mode) press zo To close the fold: zc

Debugging levels

The errors file defines a DEBUG constant, which is a numeric constant. 0 means no debugging, so only true errors will be logged with minimal information. 1 is the basic debug level, it enables some more messages whenever an error is triggered. Debug levels 2, 3 and 4 are not used right now, but they are reserved for future uses. Debug level 5 is the top debug level and it also logs errors that should be ignored (so even errors happening on lines with an @ prepended or masked by the error_reporting value).

License

This library is licenced under the terms of the modified BSD.

Download

• pea-0.1.tar.gz

Bugs

If you find a bug you can write me at webmaster@sbisinger.net.
This package has been written by Stéphane Bisinger.

TODO

There are many many things that could be done to improve this library, but right now this list stays empty. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail me.