Error Handling

Introduction
Configuration
Handling Exceptions
Throttling Reported Exceptions
HTTP Exceptions
- Custom HTTP Error Pages

Introduction

When you start a new Laravel project, error and exception handling is already configured for you; however, at any point, you may use the withExceptions method in your application's bootstrap/app.php to manage how exceptions are reported and rendered by your application.

The $exceptions object provided to the withExceptions closure is an instance of Illuminate\Foundation\Configuration\Exceptions and is responsible for managing exception handling in your application. We'll dive deeper into this object throughout this documentation.

Configuration

The debug option in your config/app.php configuration file determines how much information about an error is actually displayed to the user. By default, this option is set to respect the value of the APP_DEBUG environment variable, which is stored in your .env file.

During local development, you should set the APP_DEBUG environment variable to true. In your production environment, this value should always be false. If the value is set to true in production, you risk exposing sensitive configuration values to your application's end users.

Handling Exceptions

Reporting Exceptions

In Laravel, exception reporting is used to log exceptions or send them to an external service Sentry or Flare. By default, exceptions will be logged based on your logging configuration. However, you are free to log exceptions however you wish.

If you need to report different types of exceptions in different ways, you may use the report exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php to register a closure that should be executed when an exception of a given type needs to be reported. Laravel will determine what type of exception the closure reports by examining the type-hint of the closure:

->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->report(function (InvalidOrderException $e) {
        // ...
    });
})

When you register a custom exception reporting callback using the report method, Laravel will still log the exception using the default logging configuration for the application. If you wish to stop the propagation of the exception to the default logging stack, you may use the stop method when defining your reporting callback or return false from the callback:

->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->report(function (InvalidOrderException $e) {
        // ...
    })->stop();
 
    $exceptions->report(function (InvalidOrderException $e) {
        return false;
    });
})

To customize the exception reporting for a given exception, you may also utilize reportable exceptions.

Global Log Context

If available, Laravel automatically adds the current user's ID to every exception's log message as contextual data. You may define your own global contextual data using the context exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php file. This information will be included in every exception's log message written by your application:

->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->context(fn () => [
        'foo' => 'bar',
    ]);
})

Exception Log Context

While adding context to every log message can be useful, sometimes a particular exception may have unique context that you would like to include in your logs. By defining a context method on one of your application's exceptions, you may specify any data relevant to that exception that should be added to the exception's log entry:

<?php
 
namespace App\Exceptions;
 
use Exception;
 
class InvalidOrderException extends Exception
{
    // ...
 
    /**
     * Get the exception's context information.
     *
     * @return array<string, mixed>
     */
    public function context(): array
    {
        return ['order_id' => $this->orderId];
    }
}

The `report` Helper

Sometimes you may need to report an exception but continue handling the current request. The report helper function allows you to quickly report an exception without rendering an error page to the user:

public function isValid(string $value): bool
{
    try {
        // Validate the value...
    } catch (Throwable $e) {
        report($e);
 
        return false;
    }
}

Deduplicating Reported Exceptions

If you are using the report function throughout your application, you may occasionally report the same exception multiple times, creating duplicate entries in your logs.

If you would like to ensure that a single instance of an exception is only ever reported once, you may invoke the dontReportDuplicates exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php file:

->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->dontReportDuplicates();
})

Now, when the report helper is called with the same instance of an exception, only the first call will be reported:

$original = new RuntimeException('Whoops!');
 
report($original); // reported
 
try {
    throw $original;
} catch (Throwable $caught) {
    report($caught); // ignored
}
 
report($original); // ignored
report($caught); // ignored

Exception Log Levels

When messages are written to your application's logs, the messages are written at a specified log level, which indicates the severity or importance of the message being logged.

As noted above, even when you register a custom exception reporting callback using the report method, Laravel will still log the exception using the default logging configuration for the application; however, since the log level can sometimes influence the channels on which a message is logged, you may wish to configure the log level that certain exceptions are logged at.

To accomplish this, you may use the level exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php file. This method receives the exception type as its first argument and the log level as its second argument:

use PDOException;
use Psr\Log\LogLevel;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->level(PDOException::class, LogLevel::CRITICAL);
})

Ignoring Exceptions by Type

When building your application, there will be some types of exceptions you never want to report. To ignore these exceptions, you may use the dontReport exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php file. Any class provided to this method will never be reported; however, they may still have custom rendering logic:

use App\Exceptions\InvalidOrderException;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->dontReport([
        InvalidOrderException::class,
    ]);
})

Alternatively, you may simply "mark" an exception class with the Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ShouldntReport interface. When an exception is marked with this interface, it will never be reported by Laravel's exception handler:

<?php
 
namespace App\Exceptions;
 
use Exception;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ShouldntReport;
 
class PodcastProcessingException extends Exception implements ShouldntReport
{
    //
}

Internally, Laravel already ignores some types of errors for you, such as exceptions resulting from 404 HTTP errors or 419 HTTP responses generated by invalid CSRF tokens. If you would like to instruct Laravel to stop ignoring a given type of exception, you may use the stopIgnoring exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php file:

use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\HttpException;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->stopIgnoring(HttpException::class);
})

Rendering Exceptions

By default, the Laravel exception handler will convert exceptions into an HTTP response for you. However, you are free to register a custom rendering closure for exceptions of a given type. You may accomplish this by using the render exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php file.

The closure passed to the render method should return an instance of Illuminate\Http\Response, which may be generated via the response helper. Laravel will determine what type of exception the closure renders by examining the type-hint of the closure:

use App\Exceptions\InvalidOrderException;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->render(function (InvalidOrderException $e, Request $request) {
        return response()->view('errors.invalid-order', status: 500);
    });
})

You may also use the render method to override the rendering behavior for built-in Laravel or Symfony exceptions such as NotFoundHttpException. If the closure given to the render method does not return a value, Laravel's default exception rendering will be utilized:

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->render(function (NotFoundHttpException $e, Request $request) {
        if ($request->is('api/*')) {
            return response()->json([
                'message' => 'Record not found.'
            ], 404);
        }
    });
})

Rendering Exceptions as JSON

When rendering an exception, Laravel will automatically determine if the exception should be rendered as an HTML or JSON response based on the Accept header of the request. If you would like to customize how Laravel determines whether to render HTML or JSON exception responses, you may utilize the shouldRenderJsonWhen method:

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Throwable;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->shouldRenderJsonWhen(function (Request $request, Throwable $e) {
        if ($request->is('admin/*')) {
            return true;
        }
 
        return $request->expectsJson();
    });
})

Customizing the Exception Response

Rarely, you may need to customize the entire HTTP response rendered by Laravel's exception handler. To accomplish this, you may register a response customization closure using the respond method:

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->respond(function (Response $response) {
        if ($response->getStatusCode() === 419) {
            return back()->with([
                'message' => 'The page expired, please try again.',
            ]);
        }
 
        return $response;
    });
})

Reportable and Renderable Exceptions

Instead of defining custom reporting and rendering behavior in your application's bootstrap/app.php file, you may define report and render methods directly on your application's exceptions. When these methods exist, they will automatically be called by the framework:

<?php
 
namespace App\Exceptions;
 
use Exception;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Http\Response;
 
class InvalidOrderException extends Exception
{
    /**
     * Report the exception.
     */
    public function report(): void
    {
        // ...
    }
 
    /**
     * Render the exception into an HTTP response.
     */
    public function render(Request $request): Response
    {
        return response(/* ... */);
    }
}

If your exception extends an exception that is already renderable, such as a built-in Laravel or Symfony exception, you may return false from the exception's render method to render the exception's default HTTP response:

/**
 * Render the exception into an HTTP response.
 */
public function render(Request $request): Response|bool
{
    if (/** Determine if the exception needs custom rendering */) {
 
        return response(/* ... */);
    }
 
    return false;
}

If your exception contains custom reporting logic that is only necessary when certain conditions are met, you may need to instruct Laravel to sometimes report the exception using the default exception handling configuration. To accomplish this, you may return false from the exception's report method:

/**
 * Report the exception.
 */
public function report(): bool
{
    if (/** Determine if the exception needs custom reporting */) {
 
        // ...
 
        return true;
    }
 
    return false;
}

You may type-hint any required dependencies of the report method and they will automatically be injected into the method by Laravel's service container.

Throttling Reported Exceptions

If your application reports a very large number of exceptions, you may want to throttle how many exceptions are actually logged or sent to your application's external error tracking service.

To take a random sample rate of exceptions, you may use the throttle exception method in your application's bootstrap/app.php file. The throttle method receives a closure that should return a Lottery instance:

use Illuminate\Support\Lottery;
use Throwable;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->throttle(function (Throwable $e) {
        return Lottery::odds(1, 1000);
    });
})

It is also possible to conditionally sample based on the exception type. If you would like to only sample instances of a specific exception class, you may return a Lottery instance only for that class:

use App\Exceptions\ApiMonitoringException;
use Illuminate\Support\Lottery;
use Throwable;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->throttle(function (Throwable $e) {
        if ($e instanceof ApiMonitoringException) {
            return Lottery::odds(1, 1000);
        }
    });
})

You may also rate limit exceptions logged or sent to an external error tracking service by returning a Limit instance instead of a Lottery. This is useful if you want to protect against sudden bursts of exceptions flooding your logs, for example, when a third-party service used by your application is down:

use Illuminate\Broadcasting\BroadcastException;
use Illuminate\Cache\RateLimiting\Limit;
use Throwable;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->throttle(function (Throwable $e) {
        if ($e instanceof BroadcastException) {
            return Limit::perMinute(300);
        }
    });
})

By default, limits will use the exception's class as the rate limit key. You can customize this by specifying your own key using the by method on the Limit:

use Illuminate\Broadcasting\BroadcastException;
use Illuminate\Cache\RateLimiting\Limit;
use Throwable;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->throttle(function (Throwable $e) {
        if ($e instanceof BroadcastException) {
            return Limit::perMinute(300)->by($e->getMessage());
        }
    });
})

Of course, you may return a mixture of Lottery and Limit instances for different exceptions:

use App\Exceptions\ApiMonitoringException;
use Illuminate\Broadcasting\BroadcastException;
use Illuminate\Cache\RateLimiting\Limit;
use Illuminate\Support\Lottery;
use Throwable;
 
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
    $exceptions->throttle(function (Throwable $e) {
        return match (true) {
            $e instanceof BroadcastException => Limit::perMinute(300),
            $e instanceof ApiMonitoringException => Lottery::odds(1, 1000),
            default => Limit::none(),
        };
    });
})

HTTP Exceptions

Some exceptions describe HTTP error codes from the server. For example, this may be a "page not found" error (404), an "unauthorized error" (401), or even a developer generated 500 error. In order to generate such a response from anywhere in your application, you may use the abort helper:

abort(404);

Custom HTTP Error Pages

Laravel makes it easy to display custom error pages for various HTTP status codes. For example, to customize the error page for 404 HTTP status codes, create a resources/views/errors/404.blade.php view template. This view will be rendered for all 404 errors generated by your application. The views within this directory should be named to match the HTTP status code they correspond to. The Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\HttpException instance raised by the abort function will be passed to the view as an $exception variable:

<h2>{{ $exception->getMessage() }}</h2>

You may publish Laravel's default error page templates using the vendor:publish Artisan command. Once the templates have been published, you may customize them to your liking:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=laravel-errors

Fallback HTTP Error Pages

You may also define a "fallback" error page for a given series of HTTP status codes. This page will be rendered if there is not a corresponding page for the specific HTTP status code that occurred. To accomplish this, define a 4xx.blade.php template and a 5xx.blade.php template in your application's resources/views/errors directory.

When defining fallback error pages, the fallback pages will not affect 404, 500, and 503 error responses since Laravel has internal, dedicated pages for these status codes. To customize the pages rendered for these status codes, you should define a custom error page for each of them individually.