How to get PHP Errors to Display

Use the ini_set() Function

For security reasons, error display in production environments is disabled by default.

But, if you want to display errors in a PHP file for debugging purposes, you can place these lines of code at the top of your PHP file, as shown in the following example:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
ini_set('error_reporting', -1);

// Rest of code here...
?>

However, this doesn't make PHP to show parse errors (such as missing semicolon). The only way to show those errors is to set the display_errors directive to On in php.ini file. By default display_errors set to Off for production environments.

After modifying the php.ini file restart your web server, or php-fpm service if you are using PHP-FPM.

However, if you don't have access to php.ini file—for instance, if you're using a shared hosting—then putting the following line in .htaccess file might also work.