What is the best practice for handling and sending error messages in PHP applications?

When handling and sending error messages in PHP applications, it is important to provide clear and informative messages to users while also maintaining security by not revealing sensitive information about the application's internals. One common practice is to use try-catch blocks to catch exceptions and then log the error details for debugging purposes. Additionally, you can display user-friendly error messages on the front end to inform users of any issues.

try {
    // Code that may throw an exception
} catch (Exception $e) {
    error_log("Error: " . $e->getMessage()); // Log the error message
    echo "An error occurred. Please try again later."; // Display a user-friendly error message
}