How do I catch exceptions / missing pages in Laravel 5?

In Laravel 5 you can catch exceptions by editing the render method in app/Exceptions/Handler.php.

If you want to catch a missing page (also known as NotFoundException) you would want to check if the exception, $e, is an instance of Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException.

public function render($request, Exception $e) {
    if ($e instanceof \Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException)
        return response(view('error.404'), 404);

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

With the code above, we check if $e is an instanceof of Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException and if it is we send a response with the view file error.404 as content with the HTTP status code 404.

This can be used to ANY exception. So if your app is sending out an exception of App\Exceptions\MyOwnException, you check for that instance instead.

public function render($request, Exception $e) {
    if ($e instanceof \App\Exceptions\MyOwnException)
        return ''; // Do something if this exception is thrown here.

    if ($e instanceof \Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException)
        return response(view('error.404'), 404);

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

With commit from today (9db97c3), all you need to do is add a 404.blade.php file in the /resources/views/errors/ folder and it will find and display it automatically.