How do you debug PHP scripts? [closed]

Answer 1

I use Netbeans with XDebug and the Easy XDebug FireFox Add-on

The add-on is essential when you debug MVC projects, because the normal way XDebug runs in Netbeans is to register the dbug session via the url. With the add-on installed in FireFox, you would set your Netbeans project properties -> Run Configuratuion -> Advanced and select "Do Not Open Web Browser" You can now set your break points and start the debugging session with Ctrl-F5 as usual. Open FireFox and right-click the Add-on icon in the right bottom corner to start monitoring for breakpoints. When the code reaches the breakpoint it will stop and you can inspect your variable states and call-stack.

Answer 2

1) I use print_r(). In TextMate, I have a snippet for 'pre' which expands to this:

echo "<pre>";
print_r();
echo "</pre>";

2) I use Xdebug, but haven't been able to get the GUI to work right on my Mac. It at least prints out a readable version of the stack trace.

Answer 3

I've used the Zend Studio (5.5), together with Zend Platform. That gives proper debugging, breakpoints/stepping over the code etc., although at a price.

Answer 4

Output buffering is very useful if you don't want to mess up your output. I do this in a one-liner which I can comment/uncomment at will

 ob_start();var_dump(); user_error(ob_get_contents()); ob_get_clean();

Answer 5

For the really gritty problems that would be too time consuming to use print_r/echo to figure out I use my IDE's (PhpEd) debugging feature. Unlike other IDEs I've used, PhpEd requires pretty much no setup. the only reason I don't use it for any problems I encounter is that it's painfully slow. I'm not sure that slowness is specific to PhpEd or any php debugger. PhpEd is not free but I believe it uses one of the open-source debuggers (like XDebug previously mentioned) anyway. The benefit with PhpEd, again, is that it requires no setup which I have found really pretty tedious in the past.

Answer 6

Komodo IDE works well with xdebug, even for the remore debugging. It needs minimum amount of configuration. All you need is a version of php that Komodo can use locally to step through the code on a breakpoint. If you have the script imported into komodo project, then you can set breakpoints with a mouse-click just how you would set it inside eclipse for debugging a java program. Remote debugging is obviously more tricky to get it to work correctly ( you might have to map the remote url with a php script in your workspace ) than a local debugging setup which is pretty easy to configure if you are on a MAC or a linux desktop.