how to handle php function error

How do i form an if/else statement for a php function failing? I want it to define $results one way if it works, and another if it doesnt. I simply dont want to show an error, or kill the error message if it fails though.

currently, i have;

if(file_get_contents("http://www.address.com")){
    $results = "it worked";}
else {
    $results = "it didnt";}
return $results

From stackoverflow

• you want PHP's try/catch functions.

  it goes something like:

  try {
      // your functions
  }
  catch (Exception e){
      //fail gracefully
  }
  

  x3ro : I think try/catch only works in PHP5 and with exceptions thrown using throw. Not sure though...

  simonrjones : x3ro is right, I'm afraid try/catch only works with exceptions which are only thrown by PHP's new OO style functionality such as PDO. So not inbuilt functions like file_get_contents() which raises a warning error if the file doesn't exist. You can throw an exception from anywhere, however, and I think it is possible to send normal fatal errors to an exception via the ErrorException class. See http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.exceptions.php and http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.errorexception.php

• if(@file_get_contents("http://www.address.com");){
      $results = "it worked";}
  else {
      $results = "it didnt";}
  return $results
  

  By prepending an @ to a function, you can surpress its error message.

• As contagious said, a try/catch function works well if the function throws an exception. But, I think what you are looking for is a good way to handle the result of a function returns your expected result, and not necessarily if it throws an exception. I don't think file_get_contents will throw an exception, but rather just return false.

  Your code would work fine, but I noticed an extra ; in the first line of your if statement.

  if (file_get_contents("http://www.address.com")) {
      $results = "it worked";
  } else {
      $results = "it didnt";
  }
  return $results;
  

  Also, you can store the result of a function call into a variable so you can use it later.

  $result = file_get_contents("http://www.address.com");
  if ($result) {
      // parse your results using $result
  } else {
      // the url content could not be fetched, fail gracefully
  }