Chrome browser masking PHP errors

I thought I was going mad for a while, but it turns out that sometimes spotting php error messages which come back from the server to the Google Chrome browser can be really tough.

If the error is inside an html element or attribute of an html element you’re going to struggle to see it in Google Chrome…

<a href="<?= $Model->fakeFunction(); ?>">link</a>

If $Model doesn’t have a method called fakeFunction then php will spit a “Fatal error: Call to a member function” error. The page that is displayed in Chrome won’t show you the error and viewing the source will also hide it from you.

Even the elements tab in Chrome Developer Tools won’t show it.

There only way I’ve been able to find the error content is to look at the network tab in Chrome and view the raw response of the document back from the server.

A few hours lost on this one!