The Master Zend Framework site has posted a new tutorial for those out there looking for a bit more from their error handler than just some basic text. In this tutorial Matthew Setter introduces you to the Whoops error handler and how to use it in your Zend Expression application.

Ever experienced HTTP 500’s, but found that your error logs are empty. Ever had no clue why or how this could be happening? Perhaps you forgot to enable the Whoops error handler.

That’s right, perhaps, when you were setting up a Zend Expressive application, you made the mistake which I made recently when you used the Zend Expressive Skeleton Installer. [...] If you chose n, and used a templating engine, then TemplatedErrorHandler, would have been used as PHP's default exception handler.

As a result, no exceptions will be written in your logs. Sure, you’ll see that a 500 error has occurred somewhere in your application. But, the only information you’ll have is [a simple 500 error message].

He notes that the next step for most developers is the log files, trying to find a hint there of what might have broken. If you chose the default logger, nothing will be there as it captures those issues and pushes them to the basic error template (but doesn't output them). He points to where in the configuration you can check to see if you enabled the Whoops error handler and how to test it after you've made the switch. The reason the default is the basic message is that, in production, you don't want information exposed and log messages/code shown to just anyone - that's a big security risk.