Making PHP var_dump() values display one line per value

Question

When I echo var_dump($_variable), I get one long, wrapping line with all varable\'s and values like

[\"kt_login_user\"]=>  string(8) \"teacher1\" [\"kt_lo         


        

Answer 1

For me the right answer was

echo '<pre>' . var_export($var, true) . '</pre>';

Since var_dump($var) and var_export($var) do not return a string, you have to use var_export($var, true) to force var_export to return the result as a value.

Answer 2

I usually have a nice function to handle output of an array, just to pretty it up a bit when debugging.

function pr($data)
{
    echo "<pre>";
    print_r($data); // or var_dump($data);
    echo "</pre>";
}

Then just call it

pr($array);

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Or if you have an editor like that saves snippets so you can access them quicker instead of creating a function for each project you build or each page that requires just a quick test.

For print_r:

echo "<pre>", print_r($data, 1), "</pre>";

For var_dump():

echo "<pre>", var_dump($data), "</pre>";

I use the above with PHP Storm. I have set it as a pr tab command.