PHP exceptions thrown in error handler not caught by exception handler - php

Question

I chose this title because I have the exact same problem as stated in here:
PHP exceptions thrown in error handler are not caught by exception handler
The author accepted the answer which said he obviously was doing something wrong.
My error and exception handler were working fine that last two years, but now im facing the exactly same problem.
I did a code update and also a server update (Plesk 11.5 running, the PHP version should be the same and is 5.3.2). I checked my code for the error, but a test made it clear that this cant be the problem:
I wrote the following testfile:
function errorHandler($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline, $errcontext) {
throw new Exception("this was an error");
}
function exceptionHandler($e) {
echo 'exceptionHandler';
}
set_error_handler('errorHandler');
set_exception_handler('exceptionHandler');
// test one:
throw new Exception(); // outputs "exceptionHandler"
// test two - uncomment the first test of course!
$test->blabla();
The second test should also output "exceptionHandler", but it doesn't!
The output is "Fatal error: Call to a member function blabla() on a non-object in ......./exeptiontest.php on line 0"
This problem drives me crazy at the moment. Any suggestions here? Any PHP settings that cause this?

Answer 1

Update (After reading your comment).
After an error handler has been executed program flow would went back to the expression after that where the error occurred. But it is unreliable to pass back program flow to a fatally failed script. That's why error handlers won't get called on fatal errors. The documentation says:
The following error types cannot be handled with a user defined function: E_ERROR, E_PARSE, E_CORE_ERROR, E_CORE_WARNING, E_COMPILE_ERROR, E_COMPILE_WARNING, and most of E_STRICT raised in the file where set_error_handler() is called.
As a workaround (depending on your needs), you may define a shutdown function using register_shutdown_function().
Original Answer (It turned out that this was not the problem here)
You need to read the documentation of set_exception_handler() carefully, especially the code example:
function exception_handler($exception) {
echo "Uncaught exception: " , $exception->getMessage(), "\n";
}
set_exception_handler('exception_handler');
throw new Exception('Uncaught Exception');
echo "Not Executed\n";
Meaning in your case that $test->blabla() will never gets executed.
You might expect that the exception handler function works like a catch block, but that isn't the case. True is, that if an exception occurs and no catch block is defined, the program flow will take over to the exception handler which may gracefully shutdown the script - but not more. If you want to handle exceptions the right way, use try / catch
Just to make it more clear: exception handlers behave different than error handlers. After returning from an exception handler the program will terminate while the program flow wents back to the expression after the error when returning from an error handler.