This is just a quick little tip to show you how to log any errors in PHP to a txt file. This allows you to view any unexpected errors found in your code, even if a user does not tell you of the error.


To start off we're going to make 2 new files, one called index.php, the other called log.txt.

In my index.php file I'm going to turn error reporting on, we do this like so...


<?php

error_reporting(E_ALL);

?>


This will show all errors including notices, warnings and errors.

Next we set some options using ini_set. These will override whatever options you have set in your php.ini file. And allow us to only log errors on page we want to use.


<?php

error_reporting(E_ALL);

//Make sure errors are displayed
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

//Make sure errors are logged
ini_set('log_errors', 1);

//define where our log is
ini_set('error_log', 'log.txt');

?>


So now you will see if we throw an error such as not putting a semi-colon at the end of an echo statement and using an undefined variable....


<?php

error_reporting(E_ALL);

//Make sure errors are displayed
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

//Make sure errors are logged
ini_set('log_errors', 1);

//define where our log is
ini_set('error_log', 'log.txt');

echo $foo
?>


If we run this we get the error

"Notice: Undefined variable: foo in C:\xampp\htdocs\log\index.php on line 15"

This will also appear in our log file as...

"[19-Feb-2010 18:01:37] PHP Notice: Undefined variable: foo in C:\xampp\htdocs\log\index.php on line 15"

That is all, thanks for reading!