Safely Catch a 'Allowed Memory Size Exhausted' Error in PHP

Safely catch a 'Allowed memory size exhausted' error in PHP

As this answer suggests, you can use register_shutdown_function() to register a callback that'll check error_get_last().

You'll still have to manage the output generated from the offending code, whether by the @ (shut up) operator, or ini_set('display_errors', false)

ini_set('display_errors', false);

error_reporting(-1);

set_error_handler(function($code, $string, $file, $line){
        throw new ErrorException($string, null, $code, $file, $line);
    });

register_shutdown_function(function(){
        $error = error_get_last();
        if(null !== $error)
        {
            echo 'Caught at shutdown';
        }
    });

try
{
    while(true)
    {
        $data .= str_repeat('#', PHP_INT_MAX);
    }
}
catch(\Exception $exception)
{
    echo 'Caught in try/catch';
}

When run, this outputs Caught at shutdown. Unfortunately, the ErrorException exception object isn't thrown because the fatal error triggers script termination, subsequently caught only in the shutdown function.

You can check the $error array in the shutdown function for details on the cause, and respond accordingly. One suggestion could be reissuing the request back against your web application (at a different address, or with different parameters of course) and return the captured response.

I recommend keeping error_reporting() high (a value of -1) though, and using (as others have suggested) error handling for everything else with set_error_handler() and ErrorException.

How to recover from a fatal error Allowed memory size exhausted

This error is a fatal error - that means you cannot recover from it. If PHP has hit it's memory limit, it won't be able to allocate any more memory to create your exception and any other memory it needs to carry on its execution.

There is another type of error - "catchable fatal error" which as the name suggests, can be caught in a try/catch, but unfortunately the memory size allocation is not one of them.

How to handle Allowed memory size of X bytes exhausted before the fatal error occurs?

I ended up catching the fatal error with register_shutdown_function() and display a nice error page with layout.

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