php try catch not working properly

Question

I have code like this:

try {   
    $providerError = false;
    $providerErrorMessage = null;
    $nbg_xml_url = "http://www.somesite.com/rss.php";
    $xml_content = file_get_contents($nbg_xml_url);
    // ... some code stuff
} catch (Exception $e) {
    $providerError = true;
    $providerErrorMessage = $e -> getMessage();
    $usd = 1;
    $rate = null;
    $gel = null;
} finally {
    // .. Write in db 
}`

and problem is that, when file_get_contents can not read url (may be site not responding or something like this..) my code writes error: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! and execution goes direct to finally block bypass catch block without entering in it..

any ideas?

Answer 1

You can set an empty error handler to prevent the warning and afterward throw a custom exception in case of failure. In this case I would write a custom file_get_content like so:

function get_file_contents($url) {

    $xml_content = file_get_contents($url);

    if(!$xml_content) {
        throw new Exception('file_get_contents failed');
    }

    return $xml_content;
} 

and would use it in your block:

set_error_handler(function() { /* ignore errors */ });

try {   
    $providerError = false;
    $providerErrorMessage = null;
    $nbg_xml_url = "http://www.somesite.com/rss.php";

    $xml_content = get_file_contents($nbg_xml_url); //<----------

    // ... some code stuff
} catch (Exception $e) {
    $providerError = true;
    $providerErrorMessage = $e -> getMessage();
    $usd = 1;
    $rate = null;
    $gel = null;
} finally {
    // .. Write in db 
}

Then remember to restore the error handler calling:

restore_error_handler();

Note that when using your own error handler it will bypass the

error_reporting

setting and all errors included notices, warnings, etc., will be passed to it.