An alternative to 'var_dump' in PHP
Whilst working with PHP, I seem to use var_dump a ridiculous amount.
It’s a debugging must-have.
However, it does fall short in a few ways.
It does not take into consideration that the function is almost always displayed on an HTML page, and switching to the page source can be troublesome.
Due to these pitfalls, a host of projects such as Krumo and Kint have emerged to cater for these needs.
In addition to these projects, if you have XDebug installed, it will replace the default var_dump function with its own implementation that outputs the information with much-needed styling.
For me though, I do not need all the bells and whistles that these provide. My base requirements are:
- Better presentation on an HTML page, without the need to view the source.
- Output of the file, class, function, and line that called the function.
- The ability to end script execution immediately after outputting the information (for easier debugging).
The code…
So, as a result of these requirements, I created the two simple functions below. I am sure there are many similar implementations available online, but these two serve me well.
function dump()
{
$args = func_get_args();
echo "\n<pre style=\"border:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px;" .
"margin:10px;font:14px courier;background:whitesmoke;" .
"display:block;border-radius:4px;\">\n";
$trace = debug_backtrace(false);
$offset = (@$trace[2]['function'] === 'dump_d') ? 2 : 0;
echo "<span style=\"color:red\">" .
@$trace[1+$offset]['class'] . "</span>:" .
"<span style=\"color:blue;\">" .
@$trace[1+$offset]['function'] . "</span>:" .
@$trace[0+$offset]['line'] . " " .
"<span style=\"color:green;\">" .
@$trace[0+$offset]['file'] . "</span>\n";
if ( ! empty($args)) {
call_user_func_array('var_dump', $args);
}
echo "</pre>\n";
}
function dump_d()
{
call_user_func_array('dump', func_get_args());
die();
}