Xdebug « Bill Shupp

18Apr/113

More on step debugging in PHP

Having recently wrote about PHP step debugging in VIM, I thought I'd share a couple of things I've come across since writing it.

First, I find that I often need step debugging when writing unit tests, as that's when I'm really scrutinizing logic. It turns out it's pretty easy to do. All you need is to set the XDEBUG_CONFIG environment variable like so:

XDEBUG_CONFIG="idekey=session_name" php bin/phpunit.php tests/FooTest.php

When debugging from VIM, you'll want to have two shells open. One running the debugger, and another executing the tests. Also, note that in a shared environment, you can still pass in xdebug ini settings like so:

XDEBUG_CONFIG="idekey=session_name" \ php -d xdebug.remote_host=10.0.0.1 bin/phpunit.php tests/FooTest.php

Second, for step debugging in VIM, I've settled on this plugin (there are many versions out there). It seems to solve problems with tab handling that I was seeing with older versions.

Cheers,

Bill

UPDATE: There's a new VIM plugin that's much better for step debugging. Check out the announcement here: http://joncairns.com/2012/08/vdebug-a-dbgp-debugger-client-for-vim-supporting-php-python-perl-and-ruby/

Filed under: Code, PHPUnit, Unit Testing, VIM, Xdebug 3 Comments

12Feb/116

PHP step debugging in VIM

When debugging problems in PHP, most of the time it's easiest to just add var_dump($foo); exit; in the middle of your script, and you can see the contents of $foo right in your browser. But if you have to do much more, this approach gets cumbersome pretty quickly. I've recently been using step debugging for harder to track down problems. It allows me to examine the state of things all the way through execution of a request, line by line, or skipping ahead to break points. This process also gives you more insight into everything else happening in a request, which can be useful when you're using frameworks or other 3rd party code in your application.

Filed under: Code, PHP, VIM, Xdebug Continue reading