PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual Quickpro Guide, Second Edition

PHP Debugging Techniques

When it comes to debugging, what experience teaches you most is the causes of certain types of errors. Knowing this makes fixing the error much, much faster. To shorten the chase, Table 6.3 lists the likely reasons for the most common PHP errors.

Table 6.3. These are some of the most common errors you’ll see in PHP, along with their most probable causes.

Common PHP Errors
Error	Likely Cause
Blank Page	HTML problem, or PHP error and display_errors is off.
Parse error	Missing semicolon; unbalanced curly braces, parentheses, or quotation marks; or use of an unescaped quotation mark in a string.
Empty variable value	Forgot the initial $, misspelled or miscapitalized the variable name, inappropriate variable scope (with functions), ...