2>/dev/null

Xdebug’s improved var_dump()

Summary:

Xdebug makes var_dump() really usable, and includes a few other variable display functions for your development toolkit.

Part of my recent development environment upgrade was to install the Xdebug extension for PHP.

Before Snow Leopard I often had trouble with PEAR and PECL packages. Not sure what I was doing wrong, and I didn’t look into it all that closely. But after upgrading to Snow Leopard it was easy. I found PHP Developer’s Snow Leopard Upgrade Notes a helpful guide.

I’m still working out how to use it, but one very nice feature with no learning curve is how Xdebug overloads var_dump() with its own version, and offers a few other variable display functions too. Where standard var_dump() output looks like this:

array(2) {
  ["foo"]=>
  string(3) "foo"
  ["bar"]=>
  string(3) "bar"
}

and that only in the page source; in the browser itself it is even worse:

array(2) { ["foo"]=> string(3) "foo" ["bar"]=> string(3) "bar" }

Xdebug formats it to this:

array
  ‘foo’ => string ‘foo’ (length=3)
  ‘bar’ => string ‘bar’ (length=3)

This makes a huge difference when looking at a large, nested object. Also, you can set maximum string length, nesting, and number of children to display.

Posted 2010-03-05 (last modified 2010-03-06) under ,