E_DEPRECATED and E_NOTICE errors showing in dblog / syslog despite disabling in php.ini

Question

I'm still getting a lot of PHP Deprecation and Notice messages in my logs despite having these values turned off in php.ini. According to admin/config/development/logging I should only be displaying errors and warning if that is relevant. Is there some other way that Drupal might override my php.ini settings?

Answer 1

In drupal_environment_initialize(), Drupal changes the report level with the following code.

// Enforce E_ALL, but allow users to set levels not part of E_ALL.
error_reporting(E_ALL | error_reporting());

The value of E_ALL changes basing on the PHP version, and it is:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHP   | Value expressed using the other constants                              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Before| E_WARNING | E_PARSE | E_NOTICE | E_CORE_ERROR | E_CORE_WARNING         |
5.2.x | E_COMPILE_ERROR | E_COMPILE_WARNING | E_USER_ERROR | E_USER_WARNING    |
      | E_USER_NOTICE                                                          | 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
5.2.x | E_WARNING | E_PARSE | E_NOTICE | E_CORE_ERROR | E_CORE_WARNING         |
      | E_COMPILE_ERROR | E_COMPILE_WARNING | E_USER_ERROR | E_USER_WARNING    |
      | E_USER_NOTICE | E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR                                    | 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
5.3.x | E_WARNING | E_PARSE | E_NOTICE | E_CORE_ERROR | E_CORE_WARNING         |
      | E_COMPILE_ERROR | E_COMPILE_WARNING | E_USER_ERROR | E_USER_WARNING    |
      | E_USER_NOTICE | E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR | E_DEPRECATED | E_USER_DEPRECATED | 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
5.4.x | E_WARNING | E_PARSE | E_NOTICE | E_CORE_ERROR | E_CORE_WARNING         |
      | E_COMPILE_ERROR | E_COMPILE_WARNING | E_USER_ERROR | E_USER_WARNING    |
      | E_USER_NOTICE | E_STRICT | E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR | E_DEPRECATED          |
      | E_USER_DEPRECATED                                                      | 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With all the PHP versions, error_reporting(E_ALL | error_reporting()) causes any warning to be raised; since PHP 5.3, it causes any deprecation message to be raised too.

drupal_environment_initialize() is the only place where Drupal sets the error level. A custom settings.php file could change it with ini_set('error_reporting'). Since settings.php is included after drupal_environment_initialize() is executed, that file could restrict the error level, or expand it; this means that with PHP 5.3, settings.php could cause E_STRICT errors to be raised too.

function _drupal_bootstrap_configuration() {
  // Set the Drupal custom error handler.
  set_error_handler('_drupal_error_handler');
  set_exception_handler('_drupal_exception_handler');

  drupal_environment_initialize();
  // Start a page timer:
  timer_start('page');
  // Initialize the configuration, including variables from settings.php.
  drupal_settings_initialize();
}

About the error levels, the PHP documentation has the following notes:

In PHP 5 a new error level E_STRICT is available. Prior to PHP 5.4.0 E_STRICT was not included within E_ALL, so you would have to explicitly enable this kind of error level in PHP < 5.4.0. Enabling E_STRICT during development has some benefits. STRICT messages provide suggestions that can help ensure the best interoperability and forward compatibility of your code. These messages may include things such as calling non-static methods statically, defining properties in a compatible class definition while defined in a used trait, and prior to PHP 5.3 some deprecated features would issue E_STRICT errors such as assigning objects by reference upon instantiation.

If you are using PHP 5.4, that would explain why Drupal is recording E_STRICT errors, since Drupal adds E_ALL to the error level.