PHP 5.3: "Declaration of ... should be compatible with that of ..." error

Question

After having upgraded to PHP 5.3, my application was inundated with

"Declaration of ... should be compatible with that of ..."

style errors. I understand the nature of these errors, but I wish to disable them.

The error_reporting setting in php.ini is "E_ALL & ~(E_NOTICE | E_DEPRECATED)", but this error continues to show up. I assumed it was included in E_STRICT, but am I wrong?

Solution

It's an E_STRICT error. Change your php.ini setting to E_ALL & ~(E_NOTICE | E_DEPRECATED | E_STRICT)...

But it should be turned off by default (it's not included in E_ALL). So if you're getting them, that means it's being turned on somewhere. The question is, where? Do declare error_reporting(...) anywhere in your files? If so, check them. If not, then be sure you're editing the right php.ini file (check phpinfo())... You could always do a grep for E_STRICT to try to find where it's being turned on...

Comments

[Gordon]

it could also be enabled by using error_reporting(-1) which is the recommended way of enabling all errors on development machines.

[Ethan]

I changed the setting in php.ini, but the error still appears. It isn't set anywhere else (checked via grep) and altering the error_reporting value at runtime has no effect. Also, the line referenced in the error is always the line where the child class is declared, if this sheds any light on the problem.

[ladenedge]

For completeness, E_STRICT is included in E_ALL as of 5.4.