During development I make mistakes. And sadly it’s sometimes really hard to figure out what happens under the hood of my app. Often I end up writing statements like echo "<pre>".print_r($var, true)."</pre>";. This works really well in most cases (array’s and simple objects), but when using Doctrine-objects the server will spit out a really long object with lots of recursion.
The new debug dump-tool I now use is a variation on a snippet I found at php.net, I think it was in the comments on the var_dump function. See the image below for my current debug output:
What it prints:
1 - Call-point: which class, which method on what line. Because I code in Symfony I always know which file is associated with which class, otherwise it can easily be added.
2 - What variable/code is evaluated? The dump-tool will analyse the call stack and fetch the original source-line of the call. The source of the call is copied as the default hint. An example: calling wtUtil::dump($this->object); will display as a header: $this->object. wtUtil::dump($this->object['some']['deep']['nested']['array']); will display $this->object['some']['deep']['nested']['array']. It really saves me a lot of extra hinting on what’s being dumped.
3 - It will display (in color) the structure of the (public) attributes of the data
4- In case the variable is an object, it will state the exact class of the object
I hope you write better code than I do, so you don’t have to debug. Otherwise you can use my code for visually debugging your (Doctrine) data-structures. The code is really quick and dirty, but it works. Probably we can improve it a bit and make a plugin together?
<?php /** * */ class wtUtil { //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Function: dump // Inspired from: PHP.net Contributions // Description: Helps with php debugging static public function dump($var, $info = FALSE) { $scope = false; $prefix = 'unique'; $suffix = 'value'; if($scope) $vals = $scope; else $vals = $GLOBALS; $old = $var; $var = $new = $prefix.rand().$suffix; $vname = FALSE; foreach($vals as $key => $val) if($val === $new) $vname = $key; $var = $old; echo "<pre style='margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px; display: block; background: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; border: 1px solid #cccccc; padding: 5px; font-size: 10px; line-height: 13px;'>"; if($info != FALSE) { echo "<b style='color: red;'>$info:</b><br>"; } else { $stack = debug_backtrace(); $caller = $stack[1]; $fileinfo = $stack[0]; echo "in <b style='color: blue;'>$caller[class]$caller[type]$caller[function]</b> on line $fileinfo[line]: "; $code = explode("\n",preg_replace('/\r\n|\r/', "\n", file_get_contents($fileinfo['file']))); $vname = "<b style='color: red; font-size: 125%;'>".htmlspecialchars(preg_replace('/(.*?)dump\((.*?)\);(.*)/i','$2',$code[$fileinfo['line']-1]))."</b>"; } self::do_dump($var, $vname); echo "</"."pre>"; } //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Function: do_dump // Inspired from: PHP.net Contributions // Description: Better GI than print_r or var_dump static private function do_dump(&$var, $var_name = NULL, $indent = NULL, $reference = NULL) { $do_dump_indent = "<span style='color:#eeeeee;'>|</span> "; $reference = $reference.$var_name; $keyvar = 'the_do_dump_recursion_protection_scheme'; $keyname = 'referenced_object_name'; if (is_array($var) && isset($var[$keyvar])) { $real_var = &$var[$keyvar]; $real_name = &$var[$keyname]; $type = ucfirst(gettype($real_var)); echo "$indent$var_name <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type</span> = <span style='color:#e87800;'>&$real_name</span><br>"; } else { $var = array($keyvar => $var, $keyname => $reference); $avar = &$var[$keyvar]; $type = strtolower(gettype($avar)); if($type == "string") $type_color = "<span style='color:green'>"; elseif($type == "integer") $type_color = "<span style='color:red'>"; elseif($type == "double"){ $type_color = "<span style='color:#0099c5'>"; $type = "float"; } elseif($type == "boolean") $type_color = "<span style='color:#92008d'>"; elseif($type == "null") $type_color = "<span style='color:black'>"; if(is_array($avar)) { $count = count($avar); echo "$indent" . ($var_name ? "$var_name => ":"") . "<span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type ($count)</span><br>"; if ($count > 0) { echo "$indent(<br>"; $keys = array_keys($avar); foreach($keys as $name) { $value = &$avar[$name]; self::do_dump($value, "['$name']", $indent.$do_dump_indent, $reference); } echo "$indent)<br>"; } } elseif(is_object($avar)) { echo "$indent$var_name <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>is a</span> <b>".get_class($avar)."</b> ("; $newLine = false; foreach($avar as $name=>$value) { if (!$newLine) echo "<br>"; $newLine = true; self::do_dump($value, "$name", $indent.$do_dump_indent, $reference); } echo ($newLine?$indent:"").")<br>"; } elseif(is_int($avar)) echo "$indent$var_name = <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type</span> $type_color$avar</span><br>"; elseif(is_string($avar)) echo "$indent$var_name = <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type(".strlen($avar).")</span> $type_color\"$avar\"</span><br>"; elseif(is_float($avar)) echo "$indent$var_name = <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type</span> $type_color$avar</span><br>"; elseif(is_bool($avar)) echo "$indent$var_name = <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type</span> $type_color".($avar == 1 ? "TRUE":"FALSE")."</span><br>"; elseif(is_null($avar)) echo "$indent$var_name = <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type</span><br>"; else echo "$indent$var_name = <span style='color:#a2a2a2'>$type(".strlen($avar).")</span> $avar<br>"; $var = $var[$keyvar]; } } }