How can the code be modified to handle errors and display helpful messages for debugging?

To handle errors and display helpful messages for debugging in PHP, you can use try-catch blocks to catch exceptions and display custom error messages. Within the catch block, you can use the getMessage() method to retrieve the error message and display it to the user or log it for debugging purposes.

try {
    // Your existing code that may throw an exception
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo "An error occurred: " . $e->getMessage();
    // You can also log the error message to a file or database for debugging
}