One of my biggest gripes about PHP in comparison to other modern object-oriented languages is the relatively poor state of error handling. The mix and match style of triggered errors and exceptions is unbefitting of a modern language, especially one that is ready for the enterprise. Most modern languages deal with errors strictly through the throwing of exceptions, because it allows for a more robust method of triggering a response from the system. This is because a thrown exception, can be caught. In PHP though, a triggered error cannot.

At least not technically.

Lucky for us there is a way to make PHP behave a little more civilly than it does by default. Through some clever uses of the error and exception handlers, we can make PHP just a little more robust.
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When I first started thinking about building a server to house my growing collection of digital videos, my needs seemed simple enough. I needed a low-power computer to house a few tera-byte drives in. The computer needed to be able to run as a DLNA server, so as to stream video to my Playstation 3. On top of that, I wanted something relatively low maintenance. I love to play with new toys as much as the next bloke, however in this case, I need something that I can leave on and forget about.

My first thoughts led me to building a simple Linux server. However, as I started looking into cases and motherboards my needs jumped from, simple media server to ESX server. Why? Because that would be a really fun toy. However, it is not practical and does not meet my number one need. That it be low maintenance. Even if it could house a media server as well as a webserver and act as a router and all sorts of other fun things.

So I shelved the idea for a while. Brewed over it. I thought I about getting a Drobo, for little while, but the more I read on those, the less simple they seemed. Maybe simple if you’re talking about a backup system plugged in via USB to your computer. But plug it in via the network and run server processes on it. All I could see was a big sign saying, “this way be dragons.” Once again, simple.

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