Message System

[SoccerGloves]

Hello,

 

    I have a question about my messaging / error logging system.  I am working on a data-crunching script, so it doesn't get viewed as a public web page, it only is seen by the administrator.  All it needs is a simple on-screen output tape that keeps the person who is running it up to date on how it is working.

    So, lots of non-error status messages get written to the screen, and also into a log file and a log database-table.  I'd like to make a clean, standard way for handling all these messages.  I considered making my own "message" object that would contain a text message describing the error, an "importance" code, a message type ("error", "info", or "debug"), and a debug trace.

    So here's my question:  the built in Exception class has almost all that stuff already, and I could extend it.  Could I use exceptions for non-error messages?  Would that be good practice?  It would look like this:

 

$m = new ExeptionMessage('normal operation...50% done', 2, 'info');
$myMessageLoggingObject->send($m);

 

this would be slick: I wouldn't need to make my own message object, and I could swap-in normal, ordinary, thrown exceptions into my ->send() function,

and they would work just fine! 

 

catch (Exception $e) {
    $myMessageLoggingObject->send($e);
}

 

Is there any problems you could see with this?  Is it bad practice to use Exceptions when they are not being thrown?

 

Thanks!

[SoccerGloves]

If this is a completely off-base idea, what is a more normal way to do this?  Just make your own message class?

[ignace]

take a look at Zend_Log they even allow you to create your own error codes http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.log.html

[SoccerGloves]

Thanks!  I think I'll go in that type of direction.