PHP:Stomp - Is it possible to catch errors on "send()"? - php

Question

I'm using the PHP Stomp client to send a stomp message.
I would like to leave a persistent connection open, in the background, and send messages occasionally.
However, I can't find a way to handle connection errors if they happen after opening the connection (on send()).
For example, when running:
<?php
$stomp = new Stomp('tcp://localhost:61613');
sleep(5); // Connection goes down in the meantime
$result = $stomp->send('/topic/test', 'TEST');
print "send " . ($result ? "successful\n": "failed\n");
?>
Output: send successful
Even if the connection goes down while in sleep(), send() always returns true.
The docs weren't very helpful, Stomp::error() and stomp_connect_error() also don't help much as they return false.
As a temporary solution, I'm reconnecting before every send().
Is there a better way to catch connection errors?

Answer 1

Found the answer in the specification of the stomp protocol itself:
Any client frame other than CONNECT MAY specify a receipt header with an arbitrary value. This will cause the server to acknowledge receipt of the frame with a RECEIPT frame which contains the value of this header as the value of the receipt-id header in the RECEIPT frame.
So setting a "receipt" header makes the request synchronous, so the connection to the server must be alive.
So the code:
$result = $stomp->send('/topic/test', 'TEST');
print "send " . ($result ? "successful\n": "failed\n");
$result = $stomp->send('/topic/test', 'TEST', array('receipt' => 'message-123'));
print "send " . ($result ? "successful\n": "failed\n");
Gives output:
send successful
send failed
It doesn't seem like the best solution for this case, but it works for me.
If anyone knows a better way I'll be happy to hear it.
Update:
Eventually I switched to Stomp-PHP (a pure PHP client) instead of the Pecl stomp client, which handles it much better.