PHP CodeIgniter Errors not stopping execution of Try Blocks - php

Question

I'm using CodeIgniter and am trying to execute code in a try/catch block with the idea that errors will stop execution of the code after the error until the catch block is reached, as you would normally think it would work.
However on encountering PHP Errors, the code is continuing. This is causing a database transaction complete command to execute which is .... very bad if there's an error and all of the instructions weren't carried out properly. For example, I have this code which is executed in an ajax request:
// start transaction
$this->db->trans_start();
try {
$this->M_debug->fblog("firstName=" . $triggerOpts->{'firstXXXName'});
$data = array("test_col" => 123);
$this->db->where("id", 4);
$this->db->update("my_table", $data);
// if got this far, process is ok
$status = "process_ok";
// complete transaction
$this->db->trans_complete();
} catch (Exception $ex) {
// output the error
$this->M_debug->logError($ex);
}
In this code, I'm trying to execute a database update as part of a transaction.
My call to $this->M_debug->fblog() is designed to just log a variable to PHP Console, and I've deliberately tried to log a variable that does not exist.
This causes a PHP error, which I guess is a fatal error, and the desired result is that the code after the log commands fails, and the transaction does not complete. However after this error, despite reporting the PHP error in Chrome console, the code keeps right on executing, the database is updated and the transaction is completed. Would appreciate any help in how i could stop this from happening.
Thanks very much, G
EDIT --
As requested heres fblog(), it's simply a Chrome console log request of a variable
public function fblog( $var ) {
ChromePhp::log( $var );
}

Answer 1

Assuming you're using PHP 7.0 or higher, you can catch PHP errors as well as exceptions, however you need to catch Error or the parent Throwable type rather than Exception.
try {
...
} catch (Throwable $ex) {
//this will catch anything, including Errors and Exceptions
}
or catch them separately if you want to do something different for each of them...
try {
...
} catch (Exception $ex) {
//this will catch Exceptions but not errors.
} catch (Error $ex) {
//this will Errors only
}
Note that if you're still only PHP 5.x, the above won't work; you can't catch PHP errors in older PHP versions.