How to debug a PHP application?

Question

Which is the best way to debug an PHP application as we can debug ASP.NET application with Visual Studio ?

Answer 1

I'm using the IDE Eclipse PDT, which can use the PHP extension Xdebug to provide debugging functionnalities, kind of the same way as Visual Studio (a bit less powerful, maybe), which gives you the ability to do things like :

• step by step
• step in / out of functions / methods
• see the content of variables
• have a stack trace showing where you are

That's really nice to debug big programs -- especially ones you didn't write, to understand how they work (or don't ^^ )

It can also use the extension "zend debugger" ; but I've never tried this one.

Even without using a debugger like the one provided by PDT, Xdebug is a nice extension to have on a development server : it gives nice stack traces when there's an error/exception, it allows you to get nice-looking var_dump's output, ...

It can also be used to get profiling data, which you can visualize with tools like KCacheGrind, WinCacheGrind, or Webgrind.

But note it is hurting performance badly, so it definitly should not be installed on a production server !

Answer 2

PHP Console is good if you want to debug WEB 2.0 (AJAX) web-projects.

Answer 3

PHPEd is great for this, but you have to pay for it.

Answer 4

xdebug works, but you have to install it on the server. I haven't used it, but it seems to have a good reputation.

Some IDEs (Aptana/Eclipse + PHP springs to mind) then can interface with xdebug.

Answer 5

XDebug with Eclipse PDT is the best I've seen. Here is a tutorial on setting this up:

http://devzone.zend.com/article/2930-Debugging-PHP-applications-with-xdebug