How do you handle your custom exceptions in Laravel 5.0/5.1?

Yeah the report/render method in Handler.php should be used and test using instanceof the exception you want to catch.

As a basic example using routes.php

<?php
class FooException extends \Exception {}
throw new FooException;

public function report(Exception $e)
{
    if ($e instanceof \FooException) {
        // handle exception here 
    }

    return parent::report($e);
}

or provide a different response, like a foo error page like so

public function render($request, Exception $e)
{
    if ($e instanceof \FooException) {
        return response()->view('foo', [], 500);
    }

    return parent::render($request, $e);
}

Many thanks @phildawson,

What type of code should be present in the report and what would be the difference between handle this error or generate a custom response? Why could not send the response in the report method?

Thanks again for your answer.

No problem @cloud4bpm The response needs to be in the render method as that returns a response whilst the report should just be used for logging, sending an email, writing the error to file/database etc. You could theoretically do the logging in render but it makes sense to separate the two tasks. A method should only always really do one thing ideally.

Essentially when a request is handled errors thrown are caught and processed like so, as you can see providing a return value for report() would do nothing.

        } catch (Exception $e) {
            $this->reportException($e);

            $response = $this->renderException($request, $e);
        }
    ...

        return $response;
    }

both of those methods are in turn calling both those render/report methods with Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler being bound to App\Exceptions\Handler in the bootstrap

$app->singleton(
    Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler::class,
    App\Exceptions\Handler::class
);

    protected function reportException(Exception $e)
    {
        $this->app['Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler']->report($e);
    }
    protected function renderException($request, Exception $e)
    {
        return $this->app['Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler']->render($request, $e);
    }

it's alway a good idea to see the docblocks for the return value it's expecting.

    /**
     * Report or log an exception.
     *
     * This is a great spot to send exceptions to Sentry, Bugsnag, etc.
     *
     * @param  \Exception  $e
     * @return void
     */

    /**
     * Render an exception into an HTTP response.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Exception  $e
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     */

Many thanks @phildawson,

I get the idea.

Thanks for your new answer.