Error even when using a Try/Catch block in PHP - php

Question

I have a Laravel/PHP application with the following code:
try {
//gets the day of the last record for logged in user
$lastRecord = $user->records()->orderBy('date', 'DESC')->first()->date;
//convert to date
$lastTime = \Carbon\Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $lastRecord);
}
catch(Exception $e) {
$lastTime = \Carbon\Carbon::now($user->timezone)->addDays(-1);
}
but I still get the error:
ErrorException in Habit.php line 104:
Trying to get property of non-object
Now I'm confused.. The main idea was to fail sometimes, and then continue to the catch block. How come it's still raising an error?

Answer 1

Just a guess, but try this instead
try {
//gets the day of the last record for logged in user
$lastRecord = $user->records()->orderBy('date', 'DESC')->first()->date;
//convert to date
$lastTime = \Carbon\Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $lastRecord);
}
catch(\Exception $e) {
$lastTime = \Carbon\Carbon::now($user->timezone)->addDays(-1);
}
That is, add a leading namespace separator in front of Exception. My guess is you're using this code in a namespaced file. When you do something like this
namespace App\Some\Somenamespace;
...
catch(Exception $e) {
...
PHP assumes you want to catch an exception with the name App\Some\Somenamespace\Exception. Since that's not the exception thrown, and there's no second catch for the global PHP \Exception, PHP complains about an uncaught exception. You'll want to explicitly refer to the exception as global
catch(\Exception $e) {
or import it into the current namespace
namespace App\Some\Somenamespace\;
use Exception;
...
catch(Exception $e) {
...
FWIW, I still do this all the time. Old habits are hard to break.

Answer 2

The exception says that you are accessing a property of a non-object. This means that either $user itself or one of the properies in chain does not exist. It may be possible to avoid this by checking return values.
But if you still want to catch the fatal error, you may install a global shutdown handler, like this:
register_shutdown_function( "shutdown_handler" );
function fatal_handler() {
$errfile = "unknown file";
$errstr = "shutdown";
$errno = E_CORE_ERROR;
$errline = 0;
$error = error_get_last();
if( $error !== NULL) {
$errno = $error["type"];
$errfile = $error["file"];
$errline = $error["line"];
$errstr = $error["message"];
error_mail(format_error( $errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline));
}
}
taken from this SO post and this SO post.