Is it a good practice to use "die()" when dealing with custom PHP Exceptions?

Question

I've wrote a custom exception class in PHP:

<?php

class Custom_Exception extends Exception {

    public function __construct( $title, $message, $code = 0, Exception $previous = null ) {
        parent::__construct( $message, $code, $previous );

        echo '<html>';
        echo '<head>';
        echo '<title>Custom Exception: ' . $title . '</title>';
        echo '</head>';
        echo '<body>';
        echo '<h1>Custom Exception</h1>';
        echo '<hr />';
        echo '<p><strong>Error: </strong>' . $title . '</p>';
        echo '<p><strong>Message: </strong><em>' . $message . '</em></p>';
        echo '<hr />';
        echo '<p>This Exception was raised on: ' . date( 'Y-m-d' ) . ' at ' . date( 'H:i:s' ) . '.';
        echo '</body>';
        echo '</html>';
        http_response_code( $code );

        die();
    }

}

Is it a good practice to end my __construct overriden method with die(), to prevent outputing any parent class "Exception" messages?

As you see it outputs an HTML response into the browser. I've never dealed with custom PHP exceptions before, so I would like to know does this bother any conventions, etc?

This is okay in development, but not in production. Once you're in production, don't disclose error details to the client. Just show a generic "An error has occurred" message, log all the details and mail them to yourself. — DCoder, Oct 17 '12 at 04:33

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 17 '12 at 06:01

DCoder has a good point about sending the error to you or login it in a file so you can analyse it later, but about your question, die could be a bit drastic, it's much better to redirect the flow of the application to a page that informs, in plain language, that an error has happened and that the administrator will try to solve it. You can reword that in many ways.

But, the important part, is that the client should not be bothered or discouraged by the error. If you can explain the reason of the error and tell the user how to solve it, or not make it again and redirect to the last good step, that's the best way. If you can't, then you should try to explain and redirect to a safe but useful page, like the home page or a page with the error explanation and resources, like a search bot, the site map, the navigation tools or any other thing that may help.

I'd say, never just kill the application.

Bye

Is it a good practice to use "die()" when dealing with custom PHP Exceptions?

1 Answers1