Error handling is the process of detecting, managing, and responding to errors that occur in an application. Laravel provides tools to handle exceptions and record useful information about application problems.

Common errors in Laravel include:

• Database connection errors.
• Missing database records.
• Invalid user input.
• Authentication and authorization errors.
• Missing files or configuration settings.
• Unexpected exceptions in application code.

Good error handling helps developers identify problems without exposing sensitive information to users.

Example:

try {
    $result = 10 / 0;
} catch (Throwable $e) {
    echo "An error occurred.";
}

This illustrates the idea of catching an error or exception. In real applications, avoid deliberately dividing by zero; validate inputs and handle expected failures appropriately.

Laravel's Eloquent ORM provides findOrFail() to retrieve a record or raise a model-not-found exception if the record does not exist.

Example controller method:

use App\Models\Student;

public function show(string $id)
{
    $student = Student::findOrFail($id);

    return response()->json([
        'data' => $student,
    ]);
}

If the student is not found, Laravel normally returns a 404 response for this request.

If you want to handle the missing record explicitly, you can use find():

public function show(string $id)
{
    $student = Student::find($id);

    if (!$student) {
        return response()->json([
            'message' => 'Student not found.',
        ], 404);
    }

    return response()->json([
        'data' => $student,
    ]);
}

Use an appropriate HTTP status code to describe the outcome of an API request.