PHP escape error # for production - php

Question

I want to escape the error generated by fsockopen and it works like this.
if ($fp = #fsockopen($host,$port,$errCode,$errStr,$waitTimeoutInSeconds)) { //... }
but i have been trying other things to avoid # and I have not managed.
Is there a code that I can use that is equivalent to this?
I have tried as well something like this just for testing purposes:
try{
if ($fp = fsockopen($host,$port,$errCode,$errStr,$waitTimeoutInSeconds)) {
/...
}
//..
} catch (Exception $e){
echo 'Error';
}
It does not work.
Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to localhost:79 (A connection
attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time or established
connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.

Answer 1

Use set_error_handler() an convert all the errors to an exception you can catch afterwards:
set_error_handler(function($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline, array $errcontext) {
if(0 === error_reporting())
return false;
throw new PHPException($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline, $errcontext);
});
So now you can catch the PHP error:
try {
if ($fp = fsockopen($host,$port,$errCode,$errStr,$waitTimeoutInSeconds)) {
//...
}
//..
} catch (\Exception $e){
echo 'Connection failed: ' , $e->getMessage();
}
echo 'Don\'t worry... go on!';

Answer 2

You can disable notices and warnings in production systems (instead write to a log):
error_reporting(E_ERROR);
In development environments you'd probably want all errors, notices and warnings on though:
error_reporting(E_ALL);
check out the error reporting levels here: http://php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.configuration.php#ini.error-reporting
EDIT: To check for an error:
$fp = #fsockopen("www.example.com", 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
if (!$fp) {
echo "$errstr ($errno)<br />\n";
} else {
...
}
I think if you are handling failure scenarios then consciously suppressing a warning using # is ok.