pfsockopen shows an ugly error message on the screen and ignores my exception handler

Question

I was trying to send a document to a printer. This is the code I used:

try
        {

            $fp  = pfsockopen($ip, $port,$errno,$errstr,30);
            fputs($fp, $sContent);
            fclose($fp);

            $this->session->set_flashdata('message_header','Document verstuurd');
            $this->session->set_flashdata('message_status','info');
            $this->session->set_flashdata('message', 'Uw document is verstuurd naar de printer');
            $this->redirect('/goods_receipt/history');


        }
        catch (Exception $e) 
        {
            $this->session->set_flashdata('message',$e->getMessage());
            $this->session->set_flashdata('message_status','danger');
            $this->session->set_flashdata('message_header', 'Er is een fout opgetreden');
            $this->redirect('/goods_receipt/history');
        }

Silly old me forgot to set the IP address. I would have expected an exception and then the flash message to be shown, but instead my customer saw this:

What am I doing wrong?

p.s.: Please note I don't need any help finding why the error was thrown. I've worked that out. I just need to understand why the exception handler got ignored so that next time the socket can't be opened, a rather less scary screen gets shown.

Answer 1

pfsockopen simply returns false in case of an error and is not throwing an error. http://php.net/manual/de/function.fsockopen.php

do something like

if($fp===false){
 throw new Exception('Less Scary Message');
}