A more pretty/informative Var_dump alternative in PHP? [closed]

Answer 1

PHP Array Beautifier This simple tool takes an array or object output in PHP, such as a print_r() statement and formats it in color coding to easily read your data. http://phillihp.com/toolz/php-array-beautifier/

Answer 2

I had to add another answer here because I didn't really want to go through the steps in the other solutions. It is extremely simple and requires no extensions, includes etc and is what I prefer. It's very easy and very fast.

First just json_encode the variable in question:

echo json_encode($theResult);

Copy the result you get into the JSON Editor at http://jsoneditoronline.org/ just copy it into the left side pane, click Copy > and it pretty prints the JSON in a really nice tree format.

To each their own, but hopefully this helps some others have one more nice option! :)

Answer 3

Here is mine:

class sbwDebug
{
    public static function varToHtml($var = '', $key = '')
    {
        $type = gettype($var);
        $result = '';

        if (in_array($type, ['object', 'array'])) {
            $result .= '
        <table class="debug-table">
            <tr>
            <td class="debug-key-cell"><b>' . $key . '</b><br/>Type: ' . $type . '<br/>Length: ' . count($var) . '</td>
            <td class="debug-value-cell">';

            foreach ($var as $akey => $val) {
                $result .= sbwDebug::varToHtml($val, $akey);
            }
            $result .= '</td></tr></table>';
        } else {
            $result .= '<div class="debug-item"><span class="debug-label">' . $key . ' (' . $type . '): </span><span class="debug-value">' . $var . '</span></div>';
        }

        return $result;
    }
}

Styled with:

table.debug-table {
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
  font-family: arial,tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;
  font-size: 11px;
}

td.debug-key-cell {
  vertical-align: top;
  padding: 3px;
  border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;
}

td.debug-value-cell {
  vertical-align: top;
  padding: 3px;
  border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;
}

div.debug-item {
  border-bottom: 1px dotted #AAAAAA;
}

span.debug-label {
  font-weight: bold;
}

Answer 4

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the easiest (albeit not very pretty) code. If you just want to get a readable output (no colors or indentation), a simple <pre> around a var_dump works, as in:

echo "<pre>";
var_dump($myvariable);
echo "</pre>";

Can't get much lower overhead than this!

Answer 5

You are looking for Krumo (Warning, Chrome alerts for Malware).

To put it simply, Krumo is a replacement for print_r() and var_dump(). By definition Krumo is a debugging tool (initially for PHP4/PHP5, now for PHP5 only), which displays structured information about any PHP variable.

Answer 6

If you're dealing with very big arrays in PHP, this function may help:

function recursive_print ($varname, $varval) {
  if (! is_array($varval)):
    print $varname . ' = ' . var_export($varval, true) . ";<br>\n";
  else:
    print $varname . " = array();<br>\n";
    foreach ($varval as $key => $val):
      recursive_print ($varname . "[" . var_export($key, true) . "]", $val);
    endforeach;
  endif;
}

It basically dumps the whole array where each element is in separate line, which is beneficial to find the right full paths for certain elements.

Example output:

$a = array();
$a[0] = 1;
$a[1] = 2;
$a[2] = array();
$a[2][0] = 'a';
$a[2][1] = 'b';
$a[2][2] = 'c';

See: How to export PHP array where each key-value pair is in separate line?