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Admin Tools

#43372 PHP 8.4 TypeError in BlockedRequestHandler.php line 889 (escapeLogLine)

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Environment Information

Joomla! version
6.1.3
PHP version
8.4
Admin Tools version
7.9.3

Latest post by nicholas on Tuesday, 29 September 2026 00:07 CDT

afog
Description:

When a blocked request occurs (triggered by SuspiciousCoreParams), Admin Tools throws a fatal TypeError under PHP 8.4 while attempting to log the request to file.

Error details:

Akeeba\Plugin\System\AdminTools\Utility\BlockedRequestHandler::escapeLogLine(): Argument #1 ($value) must be of type string, null given, called in BlockedRequestHandler.php on line 863

Stack trace excerpt:

#0 BlockedRequestHandler.php(863): escapeLogLine() #1 BlockedRequestHandler.php(173): logRequestToFile() #2 BlockedRequestHandler.php(217): logRequest() #3 SuspiciousCoreParams.php(132): blockRequest()

One of the request headers or server variables passed to escapeLogLine() evaluates to null, which causes a fatal TypeError in PHP 8.4. Casting the value to (string) or allowing ?string in escapeLogLine() resolves the issue.

Kind regards, Antje

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

This appears to be due to a latent bug in file logging which has existed throughout Admin Tools 7 ever since its first release in 2021. Version 7.9.3 implemented a change so that a bug like that isn't silently ignored, but raised as a TypeException. However, the release 7.9.3 version did not include the second part of the fix which addressed the root cause and, crucially, also included the missing integration tests for this feature.

The fix will be included in 7.9.4. In the meantime, you can set "Keep a debug log file" to No.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

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