As author of Xdebug, people ask me often the question how to handle the case in teams when there is one development server and multiple developers working on the same project on that server. Xdebug only allows you to specify one IP address to connect to (through xdebug.remote_host) while doing remote debugging. It does not automatically connect back to the IP address that runs the browser the request the PHP scripts because of security reasons. You don't want everybody on the Internet to be able to run a debugging session against your code for example. There is no problem if all developers are working on a different project, because the xdebug.remote_host setting can be made for each directory (through Apache's .htaccess functionality). However, for the case where multiple developers work on the same code, the .htaccess trick won't work as the directory in which the code lives is the same.
Yes, I'm aware that a spider isn't technically a bug, but the cool thing about spiders is they eat bugs. This mechanical spider by Belgian sculptor Stephane Halleux looks especially menacing.
But we're not here to talk about spiders, we're here to talk about software bugs, and more specifically, debugging PHP code. In this fourth installment of the PHP Specificity series I'm going to break from the theme of content management packages momentarily and get into a topic that is not so dear to the programmer's heart. Debugging is a necessary evil and can be painful at times. But the reward, when it happens, is that eureka moment when you find the bug and squash it.
If you’re a PHP developer who’s searching for an approachable guide to using the most relevant functions that come bundled with the X-debug extension, then look no further. Welcome to the third article of a series on debugging in PHP with the X-debug extension. Comprised of seven tutorials, this series teaches you how to utilize the features that come with the X-debug library to debug your own PHP applications.
If you program at all, you understand the necessity of debugging. Fortunately, depending on the language in which you program, you can find an assortment of tools to help you with this task. One very good debugging tool for PHP is the X-debug extension. This seven-part series will reveal its capabilities and help you add it to your programmer's toolbox.
I’ve been tinkering with dumping PHP objects, and have found myself constantly running into a brick wall. The output from print_r and friends is fine in some contexts, but for larger structures, it would be nice to tidy the output up a bit and wrap it in some HTML.
However, these functions have a certain privilege in that they can access private/protected variables. This is not something that can be circumvented in plain PHP (save through some exotic extensions, which I’d rather not rely on). It seems that 5.3.0 may introduce a functionality in the Reflection API, but nobody knows when 5.3.0 will be out.
Zend Studio for Eclipse is a commercial edition of Eclipse plus the PDT plugin and various other additions. Unfortunately Zend decided to disable the Xdebug support of the Eclipse PDT plugin. Nonetheless if you'd like to use Xdebug for debugging your PHP scripts, follow these simple steps to restore the Xdebug functionality of Eclipse.
While PHP-developing it sometimes is just too tedious to do those 'add a echo here and there, then reload and search the echoed strings on the screen'-loops. So I searched for a debugger for my favourite editor emacs. After a lengthy install procedure I finally got it running: With geben on emacs you can debug PHP (step through and evaluate expressions)
Most of the PHP developers debug php code in their local machine just by trial and error using “print_r”,”var_dump” and “echo”. They dont write unit tests or follow any advanced debugger like xdebug. But the problem of using these methods is you cannot fool proof your code and their might be some bugs still present in your code. Lets see how can we debug our code more effectively getting more information from the php interpreter itself. There is a nice function called debug_backtrace() is available in PHP to trace the root of an error. As the name implies, you can trace the execution of you code which produces the error. Have a look at the following code.
Web developers who wish to use their time as efficiently as possible, should consider using an integrated development environment (IDE), if they are not already doing so. Just as the name suggests, a typical IDE provides the developer with an integrated suite of programming products, including an editor with multi-file editing, multiple undo and redo, local and global search and replace, stream and paragraph text selection, code-folding, multi-line tabbing, automatic creation and coloring of matching braces, intelligent indenting and outdenting of code, and more.
For the majority of experienced PHP developers, Zend Studio is considered the top-of-the-line PHP IDE. The product is put out by Zend, a company heavily involved with PHP, dating back to 1997. In fact, they created and contributed PHP's execution engine, the Zend Engine.
In this tutorial, we will explore how to use the latest update of Zend Studio for debugging PHP scripts. But first, we will get an overview of the product, its various editions, the system requirements for running it, and other installation considerations.
In March I will start to give a lecture on web programming at the University of Applied Sciences Rosenheim where I’ll be using PHP for practical application. This week I started to setup a Debian-based (Etch) web-server with PHP 5.2 in a virtual-machine with VMWare. Part of this setup was getting XDebug2 integrated. It’s really awesome and my students definitely need to learn about it. Shame on me, because I haven’t written Derick a postcard, yet.
