Error Handling in Acorn Applications

Introduction #

When working in a development environment, Acorn automatically registers an exception handler configured to handle logging as well as the rendering of thrown exceptions. This can be especially useful when diagnosing errors thrown by Blade views.

Configuration #

The debug option in your config/app.php is solely responsible for whether or not an exception is handled by Acorn. By default, this option is set to be enabled when WP_DEBUG && WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY are enabled in your WordPress config.

During local development, it is highly advised to ensure that WP_DEBUG is enabled to properly render exceptions thrown by Blade views and other errors further down the stack.

The exception handler #

By default, Acorn utilizes the Symfony exception handler. This provides an easier to read stack trace on the errors thrown in your application. While this generic error screen is useful, we recommend using Ignition during development.

Ignition #

If you're familiar with Laravel, you may have heard of Ignition. Ignition provides a beautiful and helpful error page for your application.

Not only does it provide useful hints pertaining to your error, it also allows you to publicly share your error using Flare. This can be very useful when it comes to submitting bug reports or requesting help on Roots Discourse.

To use Ignition, simply require it alongside Acorn as a dev-dependency:

$ composer require spatie/laravel-ignition --dev

Reporting exceptions #

Exception reporting can be used to log exceptions to storage or send them to an external service such as Sentry. By default, exceptions will be logged to disk located in the storage/logs folder.

Check out the documentation on logging to learn more about log implementation.

Disabling the exception handler #

Acorn's acorn/throw_error_exception filter can be used to disable the exception handler:

add_filter('acorn/throw_error_exception', '__return_false');