Laravel Error: Method Illuminate\View\View::__toString() must not throw an exception

Question

Have you seen this lovely error while working in Laravel?

Method Illuminate\View\View::__toString() must not throw an exception

I have seen it and it's incredibly annoying. I have found out two reasons why this error gets thrown. I just want to help people not take hours and hours of time.

View answers & situations below. :)

Wellborn

Was this ever a question? – Farny

@Raphael_ No sorry! I just wanted to help people if they are running into the same problem that I did and were about to pull their hair out. :) – Wellborn

Thank you for your help. I was looking for information about this and eventually Google got me here ;) – Outdoors

@Outdoors Glad it helped someone out! Were you able to get it? – Wellborn

one up! this saved me some time and gave me some guidance – Abnaki

Answer 1

Situation 1: Trying to print out a value in an array.

Answer 1: Try printing out the array. Are you sure it's an array? I've gotten this error when it was an object instead of an array. Try doing a print_r and seeing what you get.

Situation 2: You have this associated array like this:

Array
    (
        [post_id] => 65
        [post_text] => Multiple Images!
        [created_at] => 2014-10-23 09:16:46
        [updated_on] => 
        [post_category] => stdClass Object
            (
                [category_label] => Help Wanted
                [category_code] => help_wanted
            )

        [employee_full_name] => Sam Jones
        [employee_pic] => /images/employee-image-placeholder.png
        [employee_email] => [email protected]
        [post_images] => Array
            (
                [0] => stdClass Object
                    (
                        [image_path] => 9452photo_2.JPG
                    )

                [1] => stdClass Object
                    (
                        [image_path] => 8031photo_3.JPG
                    )

            )

    )

When you try to access post_images array directly within a View, it throws an error. No. Matter. What. You. Do.

Answer 2: Check in all the places where you are calling the View. What happened here is that I was trying to access the same view somewhere else in an area where I wasn't giving the post_images array. Took FOREVER to figure out.

I hope this helps someone else. :) I just know the error I kept getting didn't help me anywhere.

Wellborn

What is this array you're talking about? – Outdoors

@MaximeBernard, this was just an example. I've gotten this error many times sense I posted this. Every time, it was because I tried to call a value in a View, but didn't set it in the Controller each time I called the view. Such an annoying error! – Wellborn

Great!! Glad to hear that! :) – Wellborn

I'm getting kinda the second situation, I can access the item with no hasMany relations, but not the items with a hasMany relation, like I can't echo them out even, if I don't try to it works, I ctrl F searched my whole project but im only trying to make that view in only one place. It gives the error if I try echo those elements. – Hamill

@JahanzebKhan, are you trying to echo or print_r? Both are very different. – Wellborn

echo, I see that you're not supposed to echo an array, but one other problem I'm still running into is if I want a view within a view, then trying to echo that view causes that error, how do you output a view within a view, I tried seaching but couldn't find how. – Hamill

@JahanzebKhan, I've seen a view within a view done a couple different ways. Here's one of the ways: #17228469 Remember to submit the data that is require for the sub view. Data from the parent view does NOT go into the child view. – Wellborn

Thank you so much! I know it's probably simple to search up but I just couldn't find it anywhere! – Hamill

@JahanzebKhan you are welcome! Sometimes it's hard to find the right info if you can't find the correct words. Or at least that's what I've experienced. – Wellborn

Answer 2

There is a very simple solution: don't cast View object to a string.

Don't: echo View::make('..'); or echo view('..');

Do: echo View::make('..')->render(); or echo view('..')->render();

For PHP version <7.4 By casting view, it uses __toString() method automatically, which cannot throw an exception. If you call render() manually, exceptions are handled normally. This is the case if there is an error in the view - laravel throws an exception.

It's fixed in PHP >=7.4 you should not encounter this issue: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/tostring_exceptions.

For PHP version <7.4: This actually is a PHP limitation, not Laravels. Read more about this "feature" here: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53648

Remissible

Ahhh. Good tip! :) The laravel documentation never covered that. – Wellborn

this is very helpful! – Decorum

I still got the same error. I am currently using echo view('..'); but when using echo view('..')->render(); nothing happened. – Oversweet

@KennyUIowa maybe you are rendering a view within a view. All sub-views need to be called with render() manually. – Elbertina

It works now. However, there are variables (that were in my partial view) that were once recognized when doing a regular @include are now not recognized. I am doing your echo view method within a custom directive. – Oversweet

While it may be a php limitation, it is a laravel design. They ought to have been more explicit in mentioning the ->render() part. This has bugged me for years. Finally found the solution here today, thank you! – Deploy

Can I marry you? – Nealon

@FranciscoOchoa sorry mate, already married, but otherwise, why not. – Elbertina

Answer 3

I encountered error like this when an object in my case $expression = new Expression(); is the same as the parameter variable submitExpression($intent, $bot_id, **$expression**){ check below code for more details.

private function submitExpression($b_id, $expression){
   $expression = new Expression();
   $expression->b_id = $b_id;
   $expression->expression = $expression;
   $expression->save();

}

so I changed the above code to something like

private function submitExpression($b_id, $statement){      
   $expression = new Expression();
   $expression->b_id = $b_id;
   $expression->expression = $statement;
   $expression->save(); 
}

and everything was working fine, hope you find this helpful.

Urfa

Answer 4

My problem was finding out where exactly View::__toString() was being called in my code, so that I could fix it with using render() (as the other answers suggest).

To find it, temporarily edit vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/View/View.php, adding logging of the current stack trace:

public function __toString()
{
    // Next line added temporarily to debug.
    logger("This causes the '__toString() must not throw an exception' problem: " 
        . (new \Exception())->getTraceAsString());
    return $this->render();
}

Alpine

Answer 5

a similar error is:

FatalErrorException in FooController.php line 0: Method App\Models\Foo::__toString() must not throw an exception

and it was just a bad assignment: $foo.= new Foo;

instead of: $foo = new Foo;

Ibiza

Very true! Good call! – Wellborn

This is not really the explanation. What happens here is that you were concatenating a class with a variable which triggers the __toString() method call on the Foo instance. If the __toString() call causes an exception somewhere inside, you will see this message. – Elbertina