PCS開発チーム

PCS開発チーム

"500 Error (Internal Server Error)" Contains No Information

Simply stating "I got a 500 error" in your question is meaningless. No one can identify the cause.

While codes like 401 indicate authentication issues and 403 indicate authorization issues, the 500 error code provides no clue. It only tells you that some kind of error occurred on the server. The 500 code is used either when no other error code fits or when the details of the error are to be hidden.

To check the details of a 500 error in Laravel, you should examine the log files inside storage/logs/.

How to Remember

The knowledge that "500 errors contain no useful information, so saying you got one is meaningless" is something you only acquire through real-world experience in a production environment.

For example, with the following routing:

Route::get('/', function () {
    throw new RuntimeException('test');
});

In a development environment with APP_DEBUG=true, you can see detailed information like "A RuntimeException occurred" in the browser.

In a production environment with APP_DEBUG=false, the browser will only show "500 | Server Error" and won't provide any details. However, the logs will indicate that it was a RuntimeException, so you need to check the logs.

local.ERROR: test {"exception":"[object] (RuntimeException(code: 0): test at

This is something you'll remember once you've experienced it.