Write all PHP errors, warnings and notices to error_log

Question

Drupal catches PHP warnings and notices to log them via dblog or syslog. As a result, there are two places to monitor for PHP errors (with the watchdog UI not well suited to cater for any large number of notices).

Is it possible to prevent this behavior and have ALL php errors be logged to the error_log defined in the php config?

Answer 1

For that, you will need to implement the hook_watchdog to make calls to the error_log() function.

You could as example one of the places where is implemented, that is the syslog_watchdog. Instead of use the openlog() and syslog() function, you will use the error_log().

Answer 2

Rudimentary code example for the solution provided by @gerzenstl

/**
 * Implements hook_watchdog()
 */
function MYMODULE_watchdog(array $log_entry) {

  if($log_entry['type'] == 'php') {

    $output = format_string($log_entry['message'], $log_entry['variables']);
    $output =  strip_tags($output);
    error_log($output);

  }

}

Answer 3

Got here when googling for the same. I want watchdogs go to webserver logging, since I use Docker. After checking @gerzenstl links, I tried again looking if someone already coded it and finally found a module: https://www.drupal.org/project/logging_alerts

The 'errorlog' submodule does exactly this. Overall, all the modules are very complete and provide other useful goodies. Solved this without coding!