Handling errors/exceptions in MVC - php

As well as many other, I'm trying to create my own MVC to improve my knowledge etc. :)
I'd like to ask about handling errors/exceptions in MVC pattern.
Dispatcher is getting information from Router about Route and getting Controller's and method's name from Route. Then dispatcher is trying to create instance of this Controller and execute this method.
Now let's imagine that our method is throwing exception (yes, it is not catched in method because of bad code :)). It could be custom made exception like NotFoundException or ApplicationInternalErrorException or one of SPL excpetions like RuntimeErrorException or InvalidArgumentException. It doesn't matter, really.
Of course, we want Dispatcher catch this exception, log it and respond accordingly exception type: display 404 page if NotFoundException was catched etc.
What is the best practice for doing it? Is Dispatcher a right place for doing it? Maybe the best place is FrontController (but I'm not using this pattern; Dispatcher is creating Controller instance.
Simple code:
class Dispatcher {
public function dispatch() {
$controller = $this->getRouter()->getController();
$method = $this->getRouter()->getMethod();
$args = $this->getRouter()->getArguments();
try {
call_user_func_array(array($controller, $method), array_values($args));
} catch (Exception $e) {
Logger::log($e->__toString);
if ($e instanceof NotFoundPage) {
call_user_func(array('ErrorController', 'notFound'))
} elseif ($e instanceof ...) {
...
} elseif ($e instanceof ...) {
...
} else {
...
}
}
}
}
Is it ok, or it is not a very good practice?
Thank you.

I'm simply using an external file (xml, yaml or anything you like) which contains all the routes for my web application. When a request comes the Router tries to match the request url to one of the routes I have in my file. If there were no match it simply redirects to the 404 page with a 404 header. I think that you don't need try/catch blocks for this.
I took the idea from Symfony.

Related

Symfony 4 custom exception handler for certain controllers

From my understanding there can only be one exception handler which will catch all unhandled exceptions. However, is there an elegant way to have a specific exception handler for Controllers A and B, and controllers C, D, etc. would be handled by default exception handler?
I don't think this is possible by default, other than creating a kernel eventlistener. However, you can create something simple yourself.
In a Controller Method, you might could do something like
public function index()
{
try {
// Do normal logic here.
} catch (\Exception $e) {
// Do whatever you want with any exception.
// Or Call your exception handler: MyExceptionHandler::handle()
}
}
You can also create a custom AbstractController so it might be a bit simpler. In which you extend the render function, so you abstract that logic away

Laravel model related logs

I develop a pretty big web application using laravel. Logging to a single file or daily files seems too messy for me.
My purpose is to create error logs which will be categorised and easy for retrieval to show on front-end for tech support. E.g. user entered wrong api-key, email, whatever.
P.S. Users don't always understand meaning of the error showed so they contact tech support.
Example for better understanding:
Suppose I have model relations: User->hasMany->Project and in some
project appears an exception I want it to be written and related to
the project. e.t.c. So I could do something like $some_project_model->logs()->get() and tech support got all logs related to
certain project.
What I have in my mind is separate table for logs which is related to certain Eloquent models. But to do so ExceptionHandler needs to know to which model an Exception is related to.
So how this can be implemented? Maybe I could assign custom ExceptionHandler to certain class?
Thank you for any suggestions.
So I've actually found a proper solution:
First of all it's needed to create Log table with polymorphic relation. Then to catch all the exceptions in certain context __call magic method can be used. __call method allows to wrap every object method call with custom code. Try-catch in this case.
Example:
class Loggable
{
public function __call($method, $arguments)
{
try {
return call_user_func_array([$this->certain_obj, $method], $arguments);
} catch (Exception $e) {
//creating new $log orm
$this->get_orm()->loggable()->save($log);
}
}
protected function do_something() {
//something is going on
throw new \Exception();
}
}
$loggable_obj = new Loggable();
$loggable_obj->do_something();
To make it work, you must make all loggable methods private or protected.
In case if you think that 'encapsulation' is not just another difficult word you can achieve the same result using proxy class.
Example:
class Proxy
{
private $some_obj;
public function __construct($some_obj)
{
$this->some_obj = $some_obj;
}
public function __call($method, $arguments)
{
try {
return call_user_func_array([$this->some_obj, $method], $arguments);
} catch (Exception $e) {
//creating new $log orm
$this->some_obj->get_orm()->loggable()->save($log);
}
}
}
$proxy = new Proxy($some_obj);
$proxy->whatever_method($foo, $bar);
So, in both cases I can get all logs related to some exact orm by calling ->logs()->get() on it.
Not a rocket science at all.
One approach might be to create your own custom exception (sub)class which you could add model and/or project information to at the point of throwing the exception. Then this information would be available in the ExceptionHandler.
You wouldn't have it for built in or third-party exception types though. For those you'd end up having to catch and rethrow where possible (and necessary), wrapping in your custom exception class, which probably isn't ideal.

Commands return data

I'm trying to clean up some of my controllers by moving the functionality from the controller methods to reusable commands that I can just pass on to a command bus. As I've understood, though, a command is not supposed to return data (or did I misunderstand something?). But how else would you suggest for the controller to act on the outcome of the command?
For instance I have a Create endpoint in my ClientController. The controller method dispatches a CreateClient command, and then I'd like to redirect the user to the new Client's edit page. Something like
class ClientController extends Controller
{
public function create($request)
{
try {
$this->dispatch(new CreateClient(/*get something from the request to pass*/));
} catch (\Exception $e) {
return $this->json(['error' => $e->getMessage()]);
}
$client = ...;
$this->redirect('/client/' . $client->id);
}
}
If the creation failed I can throw an exception, which can be handled by the controller. I could of course create a method in my ClientRepository to get the newest created Client, but that seems error prone. But how would you suggest that I got a hold of the newly created client?
Edit:
At the end of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbSYZFZCFS0 they discus this actual problem. Their main suggestions are using UUIDs so the ID can be generated by the controller, or using an asynchronous method to poll for the new item.
They also mention the possibility of using event listeners, but argue that it's an anti-pattern in PHP.
I'm still undecided on how I'll prefer to do it.

Laravel 5 controller exception handler

I have an application in which my controllers are broken up into specific groups (API, CMS and front-end), this is already set up using Router groups. My question is how would one go about creating custom error handling for each group.
For example, when an exception occurs in any API controller action I would like to send back json with an error code and message, an exception in the CMS would output a detailed error page, and an exception on the front end would send the user to a generic 404 or 500 error page (as appropriate).
I am aware of how I could do this manually in each controller action, but that might get very repetitive. Ideally, I would want to create one handler for each and automatically use it across the board.
I am also aware of the App\Exceptions\Handler class, but if any of the controller groups could return a ModelNotFoundException, for example, how do I differentiate where the exception came from?
Is there another place that this type of exception handler could be inserted?
If you go to app\Exceptions\Handler.php file (which you mentioned) you can do it what you want.
You could for example define your render function this way:
public function render($request, Exception $e)
{
$trace = $e->getTraceAsString();
if ($e instanceof ModelNotFoundException
&& mb_strpos($trace, 'app\Http\Controllers\WelcomeController')
) {
return response()->json('Exception ' . $e->getMessage());
} elseif ($e instanceof ModelNotFoundException) {
return "General model not found";
}
return parent::render($request, $e);
}
and add to imports use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\ModelNotFoundException;
and now if you throw ModelNotFoundException in your WelcomeController or you for example run another class' method from your WelcomeController and this method will throw ModelNotFoundException you can track it and return json response. In other cases if exception will be instance of ModelNotFoundException you can render your exception in other way and in all other cases you can use standard exception method to render.
This way you don't need to define anything in your controller, you can do it just in Handler and it it's more complicated you could create separate methods or create new classes to handle specific exceptions in the way you want and run them in this handler.

php symfony exception handling/error handling

Working on a symfony application that uses nusoap (is this the best method for integrating soap work with php/symfony?) for taking credit card payments.
I've simplified an example of my code below.
What I'm struggling with is the best way to handle exceptions. The example below only has 1 custom exception (where should my custom exceptions reside within the directory structure of symfony? (lib/exception?)) But what happens when there are several different types of exceptions that handle a specific error? It's not very elegant to have a try/catch block with 20 odd exceptions.
I'm also not sure of where I should be throwing and catching. I need to set some user flashes to alert the user of any problems, so I figure the catching should be done in the actions controller rather than within the class that handles the soap call.
Could anyone please advise where I might be going wrong?
I hate messy code/solutions and want to stick to the DRY principle as much as possible. I think I might also be missing some built in symfony functionality that might help with this but whenever I search I usually find examples that are for symfony 1.2, I'm using 1.4.
Some examples would be great, thanks.
lib/soap_payment.class.php
class SoapPayment
{
public function charge()
{
/*assume options are setup correctly for sake of example*/
try
{
$this->call();
}
catch (SoapPaymentClientFaultException $e)
{
/* should this be caught here? */
}
}
private function call()
{
$this->client->call($this->options);
if ($this->client->hasFault())
{
throw new SoapPaymentClientFaultException();
}
}
}
apps/frontend/payment/actions/actions.class.php
class paymentActions extends sfActions
{
public function executeCreate(sfWebRequest $request)
{
/* check form is valid etc */
$soap_payment = new SoapPayment();
try
{
$soap_payment->charge();
}
catch (SoapPaymentClientFaultException $e)
{
/* or throw/catch here? */
$this->getUser()->setFlash('error', ...);
$this->getLogger()->err(...);
}
/* save form regardless, will set a flag to check if successful or not in try/catch block */
}
}
One not very well known feature of Symfony is that exceptions can manage the content sent in a response. So you could do something like this:
class SoapException extends sfException
{
public function printStackTrace() //called by sfFrontWebController when an sfException is thrown
{
$response = sfContext::getInstance()->getResponse();
if (null === $response)
{
$response = new sfWebResponse(sfContext::getInstance()->getEventDispatcher());
sfContext::getInstance()->setResponse($response);
}
$response->setStatusCode(5xx);
$response->setContent('oh noes'); //probably you want a whole template here that prints the message that was a part of the SoapException
}
}
If you need a cleaner handling of SOAP exceptions, like setting flashes, etc. you'll probably have to catch each exception. One idea here might be to create a generic SoapException class that is extended by more specific SoapExceptions so you don't have to catch a bunch of different types. The above code may be a useful fallback mechanism as well.
Finally, yes, you should place custom exceptions in lib/exception.

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