Capture error of php "file_get_contents" silently

Question

here is the code :

if( false == (file_get_contents($jsonaddress)))
{
    //error
    print ('Error with stream, getting file instead !<br />');
    $jsonaddress = 'listedesodeurs.txt';
} 

else 
{
    //noerror
    print ('Sucessfully GET data from JSON stream<br />');
    $jsoncontent = file_get_contents($jsonaddress);
    $size = file_put_contents('listedesodeurs.txt', $jsoncontent);
    echo ('Making backup of stream in file : '.round(($size/1024),0).' KB <br />');
}

When the file_get_contents = true (no error) everything get well when the file_get_contents = false I juste got THE big error message at screen... i just like to test it, not execute it !

HOW ?

here is the error message :

[function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Inappropriate ioctl for device in 

Answer 1

The quick way:

if( false == (@file_get_contents($jsonaddress)))

'@' suppresses errors.

A potentially better way is to just test:

if (! file_exists($jsonaddress)){

May well do you what you want (see if you can get get the stream, but simply return false if it fails)... but I'm not sure how well it will work. (haven't tried that with fopen wrappers recently)

Answer 2

You can also check is_readable() to see if file_get_contents() is likely to fail:

if(is_readable($jsonaddress)) {
    // noerror
    print ('Sucessfully GET data from JSON stream<br />');
    ... etc
}
else {
    // error
    print ('Error with stream, getting file instead !<br />');
    ... etc
}