PHP Error Reporting Levels – WTF is 6134?

December 1, 2008 17:11

In PHP, the error reporting level (whether errors go to the log or to the screen or whatever) is determinded by the error_reporting INI directive (or at runtime using the error_reporting() function). Both take an integer as their value - and usually this integer is represented by error level constants like E_ALL, E_STRICT or E_USER_WARNING.

So in order to set the error reporting to anything but notices and strict errors, you would set something like this in php.ini:

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CODE:
  1. error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_STRICT

(actually, E_ALL does not really include E_STRICT but I put it here just to be more explicit)

This is actually great - one of the more easy to use and understand APIs in my opinion (yeah, I really like bitwise operations).

However, what I really hate is that sometimes I need to work with the integer value of the error reporting level (like 1 for E_ERROR or 84 for E_PARSE | E_CORE_ERROR | E_COMPILE_ERROR) and it's very hard for me to remember what arbitrary numbers like 6134 mean.

So, today I wrote this tiny CLI script that helps me understand what an arbitrary error_reporting level integer might mean:

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CODE:
  1. <?php
  2.  
  3. $errorLevels = array(
  4.         'E_COMPILE_ERROR'     => E_COMPILE_ERROR,
  5.         'E_COMPILE_WARNING'   => E_COMPILE_WARNING,
  6.         'E_CORE_ERROR'        => E_CORE_ERROR,
  7.         'E_CORE_WARNING'      => E_CORE_WARNING,
  8.         'E_ERROR'             => E_ERROR,
  9.         'E_NOTICE'            => E_NOTICE,
  10.         'E_PARSE'             => E_PARSE,
  11.         'E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR' => E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR,
  12.         'E_STRICT'            => E_STRICT,
  13.         'E_USER_ERROR'        => E_USER_ERROR,
  14.         'E_USER_NOTICE'       => E_USER_NOTICE,
  15.         'E_USER_WARNING'      => E_USER_WARNING,
  16.         'E_WARNING'           => E_WARNING,
  17. );
  18.  
  19. if (! isset($_SERVER['argv'][1])) {
  20.         fprintf(STDERR, "Usage: {$_SERVER['argv'][0]} <error_level>\n" .
  21.                         "  Where <error_level> is a PHP error reporting level\n");
  22.         exit(1);
  23. }
  24.  
  25. $level = $_SERVER['argv'][1];
  26.  
  27. echo "Error level $level includes:\n";
  28. foreach ($errorLevels as $k => $v) {
  29.         if ($level & $v) echo "\t $k \n";
  30. }
  31.  
  32. echo "\n";

To use, just run the script with a single value parameter, like so:

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CODE:
  1. shahar.e@wintergreen ~ $ php error_level.php 6134
  2. Error level 6134 includes:
  3.      E_COMPILE_ERROR
  4.      E_COMPILE_WARNING
  5.      E_CORE_ERROR
  6.      E_CORE_WARNING
  7.      E_PARSE
  8.      E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR
  9.      E_USER_ERROR
  10.      E_USER_NOTICE
  11.      E_USER_WARNING
  12.      E_WARNING

Enjoy!

Filed under Linux & FOSS, PHP & Web Technologies
1 Comment

One Response to “PHP Error Reporting Levels – WTF is 6134?”

  1. Piccolo Principe
    December 1st, 2008 | 17:47

    I appreciate the fact the script makes no assumption on numerical values of the constants and on the order of them. I probably would have made the error of basing the script on % operator...