PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception'

Question

I'm playing around with exceptions in PHP. For example, I have a script that reads a $_GET request and loads a file; If the file doesn't exists, an new exception should be thrown:

if ( file_exists( $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] .'/'.$_GET['image'] ) ) {
    // Something real amazing happens here.
}
else {
    throw new Exception("The requested file does not exists.");
}

The problem is that, when I try to supply an non existent file for the test, I got a 500 error instead of the exception message. The server log is the following:

[09-Jul-2013 18:26:16 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'The requested file does not exists.' in C:\sites\wonderfulproject\script.php:40
Stack trace:
#0 {main}
  thrown in C:\sites\wonderfulproject\script.php on line 40

I wonder if I'm missing something real obvious here.

I've checked this question PHP fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message but it's not quite like my issue, and have no concise answer.

Help, please?

* EDIT *

It seems this is something related to the throw keyword. If I use echo for example, I got the message printed on the screen, like this:

exception 'Exception' with message 'The file does not exists.' in C:\sites\wonderfulproject\script.php:183 Stack trace: #0 {main}

Why is that?

** EDIT 2 **

Thanks to @Orangepill, I got a better understanding about how to handle exceptions. And I found a superb tut from nettuts that helped a lot. The link: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/the-ins-and-outs-of-php-exceptions/

Answer 1

This is expected behavior for an uncaught exception with display_errors off.

Your options here are to turn on display_errors via php or in the ini file or catch and output the exception.

 ini_set("display_errors", 1);

or

 try{
     // code that may throw an exception
 } catch(Exception $e){
     echo $e->getMessage();
 }

If you are throwing exceptions, the intention is that somewhere further down the line something will catch and deal with it. If not it is a server error (500).

Another option for you would be to use set_exception_handler to set a default error handler for your script.

 function default_exception_handler(Exception $e){
          // show something to the user letting them know we fell down
          echo "<h2>Something Bad Happened</h2>";
          echo "<p>We fill find the person responsible and have them shot</p>";
          // do some logging for the exception and call the kill_programmer function.
 }
 set_exception_handler("default_exception_handler");