Turn off display errors using file "php.ini"

Question

I am trying to turn off all errors on my website. I have followed different tutorials on how to do this, but I keep getting read and open error messages. Is there something I am missing?

I have tried the following in my php.ini file:

;Error display
display_startup_errors = Off
display_errors = Off
html_errors = Off
docref_root = 0
docref_ext = 0

For some reason when I do a fileopen() call for a file which does not exist, I still get the error displayed. This is not safe for a live website, for obvious reasons.

Answer 1

I always use something like this in a configuration file:

// Toggle this to change the setting
define('DEBUG', true);

// You want all errors to be triggered
error_reporting(E_ALL);

if(DEBUG == true)
{
    // You're developing, so you want all errors to be shown
    display_errors(true);

    // Logging is usually overkill during development
    log_errors(false);
}
else
{
    // You don't want to display errors on a production environment
    display_errors(false);

    // You definitely want to log any occurring
    log_errors(true);
}

This allows easy toggling between debug settings. You can improve this further by checking on which server the code is running (development, test, acceptance, and production) and change your settings accordingly.

Note that no errors will be logged if error_reporting is set to 0, as cleverly remarked by Korri.