PDO Exception Handling Configuration

As a developer, you may prefer to have PDO throw exceptions by default. This eliminates the need to explicitly set the error handling mode every time you establish a database connection. While you can manually set the error mode using $dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION), you may wonder if there's a way to make this the default behavior.

Default Exception Handling

Unfortunately, there is no built-in configuration file or option in the php.ini file that allows you to set PDO to throw exceptions by default. This is because PHP handles error handling globally, and it's not specific to PDO.

Solution

To achieve your desired behavior, you have two options:

1. Constructor Argument

You can pass an array of options to the PDO constructor, including the error handling mode:

$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=someDatabase', 'username', 'password', array(
  PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
));

2. Wrapper Class

Alternatively, you can create a wrapper class that extends PDO and always sets the error mode to exception mode:

class MyPDO extends PDO {
  public function __construct($dsn, $username, $password) {
    parent::__construct($dsn, $username, $password, array(
      PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
    ));
  }
}

With this approach, you can use your custom PDO class instead of the regular PDO class and always get exception handling behavior:

$pdo = new MyPDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=someDatabase', 'username', 'password');