How to display errors on laravel 4?

I'm trying to create an app on Laravel 4 beta but I can't debug it because it doesn't show any error, display_errors is on, error_reporting is E_ALL and debug => true (config/app.php). When I try to do an error on public/index.php it shows a parse error, but when I do it on the router it just shows a blank page (White screen of death). How can I fix this?

Thank you

@Matanya - have you looked at your server logs to see WHAT the error 500 actually is? It could be any number of things

@Aladin - white screen of death (WSOD) can be diagnosed in three ways with Laravel 4.

Option 1: Go to your Laravel logs (app/storage/logs) and see if the error is contained in there.

Option 2: Go to you PHP server logs, and look for the PHP error that is causing the WSOD

Option 3: Good old debugging skills - add a die('hello') command at the start of your routes file - then keep moving it deeper and deeper into your application until you no longer see the 'hello' message. Using this you will be able to narrow down the line that is causing your WSOD and fix the problem.

I had a problem with the white screen after installing a new laravel instance. I couldn't find anything in the logs because (eventually I found out) that the reason for the white screen was that app/storage wasn't writable.

In order to get an error message on the screen I added the following to the public/index.php

try {
    $app->run();
} catch(\Exception $e) {
    echo "<pre>";
    echo $e;
    echo "</pre>";
}

After that it was easy to solve the problem.

Go to app/config/app.php

and set 'debug' => true,

Following the good advice by @The Shift Exchange I looked at the error_log and indeed managed to solve to problem. it was simply a permissions issue:

Tue Feb 26 11:22:20 2013] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught exception 'UnexpectedValueException' with message 'The stream or file "/Users/matanya/Sites/indgo/app/start/../storage/logs/log-apache2handler-2013-02-26.txt" could not be opened: failed to open stream: Permission denied' in /Users/matanya/Sites/indgo/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/StreamHandler.php:71\nStack trace:\n#0 /Users/matanya/Sites/indgo/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/RotatingFileHandler.php(77): Monolog\\Handler\\StreamHandler->write(Array)\n#1 /Users/matanya/Sites/indgo/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/AbstractProcessingHandler.php(37): Monolog\\Handler\\RotatingFileHandler->write(Array)\n#2 /Users/matanya/Sites/indgo/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Logger.php(217): Monolog\\Handler\\AbstractProcessingHandler->handle(Array)\n#3 /Users/matanya/Sites/indgo/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Logger.php(281): Monolog\\Logger->addRecord(400, Object(ErrorException), Array)\n#4 [internal function]: Monolog\\Logger->addError(Object(ErrorException))\n#5 /Users/matanya/Sites/in in /Users/matanya/Sites/indgo/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/Handler/StreamHandler.php on line 71

Once I used chmod to apply less stringent permissions, all went back to normal.

However, I'm not sure that it answers the OP's question, as he was getting a blank screen rather than a server error.

Hasnat Safder

Inside config folder open app.php

Change

'debug' => false,

'debug' => true,

In the Laravel root folder chmod the storage directory to 777

Maybe not on Laravel 4 this time, but on L5.2* I had similar issue:

I simply changed the ownership of the storage/logs directory to www-data with:

# chown -R www-data:www-data logs

PS: This is on Ubuntu 15 and with apache.

My logs directory now looks like:

drwxrwxr-x  2 www-data   www-data 4096 jaan  23 09:39 logs/

https://github.com/loic-sharma/profiler this is good example for alternative to laravel3 debug bar.

Further to @cw24's answer • as of Laravel 5.4 you would instead have the following amendment in public/index.php

try {
    $response = $kernel->handle(
        $request = Illuminate\Http\Request::capture()
    );
} catch(\Exception $e) {
    echo "<pre>";
    echo $e;
    echo "</pre>";
}

And in my case, I had forgotten to fire up MySQL.
Which, by the way, is usually mysql.server start in Terminal

Just go to your app/storage/logs there logs of error available. Go to filename of today's date time and you will find latest error in your application.

Open app/config/app.php and change setting