How can I set up error_log by folder? - php

Question

My company has a large hosting, but it’s not managed by us, we don't see configuration files, but I want to reply this feature on our local test server.
I’m new in my company and want to start some debug of applications to fix some minors and majors issues to clients, but the amount of files is so big that single error_file is huge.. and there are many people working on this so each time I check log (like 30 secs to 1 min) has hundreds of added lines.
I don’t know if this is set up on Apache, through .htaccess files or in php.ini.
I am talking about PHP errors, but I don't know if this is set in PHP, Apache, or maybe using a third-party library.
I'm not talking about setting a specific folder error_log. I'm talking about if errors are logged in the scripts folder.
Example: I create a folder named test1. Inside it I make some buggy PHP script that throws some errors. When I run the script I can see an error_log file created in the folder. So it works on the fly.
I have tried to ask the hosting company support how they do this, but they haven’t answered me.
I don't know if maybe could be some kind of cPanel setting (BTW, the hosting support stuff doesn't understand this question either, but well.. usually level 1 of support can’t handle technical stuff).

Answer 1

I found it.
You have to set a directive in the php.ini file as follows, string "error_log". On the right side is the file name you want for the log,
error_log = error_log
This will generate a PHP error log in the folder where script executed are,
I'll try to explain.
Script test.php in folder /www/site/lib:
include "./db_conn.php";
If file db_conn.php is not located in the same directory, this will fire a warning and error. Usually this will be lead to the servers/vhost log, but using this directive you will get an error_log file under the /www/site/lib directory.
Why was I looking or this? Well, as I wrote, I'm working on a huge application, with thousands of files many fires warnings, notices, etc. I'm not the only one in the project and the site error_log file was so huge it was hard to keep tracking debug evolution for one or just some files. Now I just have to track the log from directories where I'm working.

Answer 2

You can manage the logs by adding this to your vhost or htaccess file
ErrorLog /path/to/a/writable/directory/error.log
For more information, have a look at this article on advanced PHP error handling via htaccess.

Answer 3

To do this in PHP, edit file php.ini and add the line
error_log = /path/to/where/you/want/your/php-errors.log
Then restart the web server. This should give you PHP errors, and only PHP errors, to that file. Provided, of course, that the scripts aren't written to throw away all errors.
To do it in Apache, you can use SetEnvIf to add an environment variable to any request ending in PHP, and then printing all logs with that particular environment variable. E.g.:
SetEnvIf Request_URI "\.php$" phplog
CustomLog /path/to/php.log env=phplog
To use this in multiple folders, make one environment variable per folder and one CustomLog per folder, like this:
SetEnvIf Request_URI "/folder1/.*\.php$" log_folder1
Customlog /path/to/folder1/php.log env=log_folder1
SetEnvIf Request_URI "/folder2/.*\.php$" log_folder2
Customlog /path/to/folder2/php.log env=log_folder2