Help catching exception.

[Xdega]

So basically I have a function that grabs a daily bible scripture via an rss feed. For whatever reason, it is offline today and I was greeted with a huge paragraph of errors and the bottom part of my page not rendering.

 

Here is the function:

<?php
function scripture(){
function fetchXML($url) 
{  
$ch = curl_init(); 
$useragent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1"; 
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); 
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent); 
//get data 
$data = curl_exec($ch); 
curl_close($ch); 
return $data; 
} 
define("USE_CURL", true); 
$url = "http://www.mybiblescripture.com/rss/bible.php?fmt=daily&trans=KJV";
//get xml doc with info 
$data = fetchXML($url);  
//create a SimpleXML object to parse the xml 
$char_xml = new SimpleXmlElement($data); 
$scripture_a=$char_xml->channel->item->description;
$scripture_b=$char_xml->channel->item->title;
echo $scripture_a . '<br><b>'. $scripture_b. '</b>';
}	
?> 

 

And here is the nasty error I receive due to the url being offline:

 

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'String could not be parsed as XML' in /path/lbcfunc.php:21 Stack trace: #0 /path/lbcfunc.php(21): SimpleXMLElement->__construct('') #1 /path/index.php(31): scripture() #2 {main} thrown in /path/lbcfunc.php on line 21

 

I have 0 experience in catching exceptions and unsure where to start. I would like to try and just echo: "No Bible Scripture Found" as a friendly message instead I guess.

 

thanks.

[Xdega]

anyone? I tried adding

<?php
catch (Exception $e) {
    echo 'Caught exception: ',  $e->getMessage(), "\n";
}
?>

directly underneath:

 

<?php
//get xml doc with info 
$data = fetchXML($url);  
?>

 

But that was just giving me an error of "unexpected T_Catch"...

 

 

[Xdega]

Anyone have any idea on this? I'm sure it's something simple. 

 

[Xdega]

ok. I have been working on this, and finally got it! (Kinda). I enclosed the entire function in a "try block" like so:

<?php
//BIBLE SCRIPTURE MODULE
function scripture(){
try {
			function fetchXML($url) 
			{  
			$ch = curl_init(); 
			$useragent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1"; 
			curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); 
			curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 
			curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent); 
			//GET DATA
			$data = curl_exec($ch); 
			curl_close($ch); 
			return $data; 
			} 
		define("USE_CURL", true); 
		$url = "http://www.mybiblescripture.com/rss/bible.php?fmt=daily&trans=KJV";
		//GET XML INFO
		$data = fetchXML($url);  
		//CREATE SIMPLEXML OBJECT
		$char_xml = new SimpleXmlElement($data); 
		$scripture_a=$char_xml->channel->item->description;
		$scripture_b=$char_xml->channel->item->title;
		echo $scripture_a . '<br><b>'. $scripture_b. '</b>';
	}
	//CATCH EXCEPTION
	catch (Exception $e) {
	echo 'Scripture Module Offline!: ',  $e->getMessage(), "\n";
	}	
}

 

The problem I have now though, is that the page takes a LONG time to load, before outputting the much friendlier error message (I was probably going to make this message a "fallback verse".

 

Does anyone know how I could speed up the process though, because the time the page is taking to load is unacceptable atm.

thx

[Xdega]

I know there seems to be very little interest in assisting here here (which sucks) 

But I went ahead and added a short timeout option to the cURL function that I am using with the following code:

<?php
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT ,3);

 

This addresses the issue of the page loading super slow because it cant connect to the source url, but

I feel that 3 seconds may be too short of a timeout? What do you guys think?