Trace where code is coming from (PHP)

Question

I\'m going through a customer\'s server, running crazy proprietary forum software (vBulletin) and even worse SEO mods (vbseo). I cannot figure out where the php code for a page

Answer 1

phptrace is an awesome and simple tool to trace php code executions, you can have a try.

Answer 2

Sounds like you need to step through it with Xdebug. Most common IDE's support it such as Netbeans and PHPStorm.

Resources:

• Tracing PHP apps with Xdebug
• Xdebug with Netbeans
• Xdebug with PHPstorm (I recommend)
• Xdebug with Eclipse
• Chrome Xdebug extension (I recommend)
• Firefox Xdebug plug-in

In both the above mentioned IDE's, you can CTRL+Click a function/method and it will take you to the line in the file where it is defined. You can also track usages for both functions and variables.

Tracing code is built-in to xdebug. Here's an example from Zend:

<?php

  xdebug_start_trace('c:/data/fac.xt');

  print fac(7);

  function fac($x)
  {
    if (0 == $x) return 1;
    return $x * fac($x - 1);
  }

  xdebug_stop_trace();

?>

Trace file output:

TRACE START [2007-10-26 12:18:48]
    0.0068      53384     -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:5
    0.0069      53584       -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:10
    0.0069      53840         -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:10
    0.0070      54096           -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:10
    0.0070      54376             -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:10
    0.0071      54656               -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:10
    0.0072      54936                 -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:10
    0.0072      55216                   -> fac() C:\www\fac.php:10
    0.0073      55392     -> xdebug_stop_trace() C:\www\fac.php:13
    0.0237      55392
TRACE END   [2007-10-26 12:18:48]

Answer 3

You can also use the apd extension; this will write a file for each request containing a log of what PHP functions were called during the request.

Answer 4

To trace the origin of a specific function, you can do this:

$reflFunc = new ReflectionFunction('function_name');
print $reflFunc->getFileName() . ':' . $reflFunc->getStartLine();

See How to find out where a function is defined?

To trace the origin of a specific class, you can do this:

$reflClass = new ReflectionClass('class_name');
print $reflClass->getFileName() . ':' . $reflClass->getStartLine();

To get a list of all the includes that went into making a page, you can do this:

var_dump(get_included_files());

To get a list of all the functions that are defined on a page, you can do this:

var_dump(get_defined_functions());

To get a list of all the user-defined functions on a page, you can do this:

$defined_functions = get_defined_functions();
var_dump($defined_functions["user"]);

Answer 5

Check out the debug_backtrace function - this should always be available, even on production servers.