Comments on: How to setup a PHP Error log for WordPress – Revisited

By: Rilwis

Rilwis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:31:48 +0000

In my shared host, all the WP errors go to file errors.log without any hack to config.php file. But I think this post is nice for some situation, thank you.

By: Nacin

Nacin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:01:21 +0000

I also noticed you suggested a core hack. I’d suggest instead forgoing WP_DEBUG all together — the whole point there is to get E_NOTICEs, which includes WordPress-specific deprecated warnings and debug material.

Instead, just let WordPress set its standard non-debug error_reporting level and do exactly what WordPress would do to turn on a log:
ini_set( ‘display_errors’, 0 );
ini_set( ‘log_errors’, 1 );
ini_set( ‘error_log’, WP_CONTENT_DIR . ‘/debug.log’ );

Hope that helps!

By: Nacin

Nacin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:57:19 +0000

E_DEPRECATED is a PHP constant, new in PHP 5.3, when PHP introduced deprecated warnings. If it exists, we exclude E_DEPRECATED warnings, as WordPress does a few things that is deprecated in 5.3 to ensure PHP 4 compatibility.

(E_STRICT is excluded from E_ALL, but in PHP 6, it is included. Hence why we also include that if PHP 5.3 or greater.)

WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY == false does not hide any errors, it simply doesn’t force them to be displayed (and thus it falls back to the server setting). They are forced on when WP_DEBUG is true.

The inline documentation for this was confusing and in some cases incorrect, so I wrote up new documentation a few days ago.

If you *don’t* want errors displayed, as the example shows, then do this:
define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true); // Turn on WP debug mode
define(‘WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY’, false); // WP won’t force-display them
define(‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true); // Log them to wp-content/debug.log
ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0 ); // Set the global config display_errors to off.

Hope that all makes sense.

By: Phil (Frumph)

Phil (Frumph) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:36:18 +0000

Well thats the thing, it does work on my machine, it’s currently creating a debug.log with *only* php errors inside of it.

By: Adam Spiers

Adam Spiers — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:41:47 +0000

Also, WP doesn’t currently let you hide E_DEPRECATED warnings in a clean manner, so I reopened this ticket with a new proposal to solve it:

http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/11987

By: Adam Spiers

Adam Spiers — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:40:21 +0000

I know that, but it only works if it’s correctly defined as the value 8192:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.constants.php

It doesn’t work in your case because you redefined E_DEPRECATED to be 1, which is the same value as E_ERROR. So you are doing a bitwise AND (&) with ~1, which results in hiding all fatal runtime errors, rather than hiding deprecation warnings. That’s definitely a bad idea!

By: Phil (Frumph)

Phil (Frumph) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:56:54 +0000

the ~ before the E_DEPRECATED means to ‘not include’ in the error reporting

By: Adam Spiers

Adam Spiers — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:33:53 +0000

Thanks for the ideas. I'm not a WordPress expert by any means, but I wonder if this is the best way of doing it. Any changes to wp-settings.php will get lost during an upgrade, and also defining E_DEPRECATED (or redefining in the case of PHP 5.3 or newer) to have the same value as E_ERROR (1) is asking for trouble.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:36:56 +0000

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