Clear output to show error page

[techpro]

I'm running a PHP/MySQL script on my server. Sometimes, presumably due to some transient problem with the MySQL server, the script displays warnings like:

 

Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/blah_blah/file.php on line xx

 

on the page. It's not a script error, because the same page can display perfectly a couple of minutes later.

 

I wanted to have the script display a friendly page saying there is a temporary error, please come back later, when this occurs. With the help of this article I have learned how to trap PHP errors and display my own output. But the output still appears after whatever HTML has already been generated by the script.

 

Is there a way to get the browser to clear everything that has been output so my error message always starts on a clean page? Rewriting the script so that nothing is printed until the end would be way too complicated.

 

Thanks in advance.

[.Stealth]

I usually gather all of the errors on my page using an array.

 

<?php

$errors = array();

if($something){
$errors[] = "An error has occured, unable to fetch info from the database";
}

if(empty($errors)){
//do the right thing
}else{
//display error page
}
?>

[techpro]

Thanks. I didn't write the script. I'm trying to find a solution that requires minimum modification to the existing code, preferably just adding an include line at the top for the error handler. So I can't do anything about what's been output to the browser by the time an error occurs.