Debugging with Xdebug

Derick Rethans (25.Sep.2009)
Talk at CodeWorks 2009 (Los Angeles) (English - US)

This session teaches you how to detect and debug PHP scripts with the free open source tool Xdebug, which is an extension to PHP. The first part will deal withsome of the internals of the extension to explain how it gathers information from the PHP Engine. The second part of the session will cover detecting problems in yourscripts by showing how Xdebug provides debugging aides in the form of stack/function traces, dumps of variables, modified PHP functions. In the last partI will show the remote debugger capabilities of Xdebug, where you can: set breakpoints on functions, methods and file/line compabinations; watch execution detailssuch as stack frames, per-frame information; run PHP code to modify the current state of your script and evaluating error messages.On top of this you will also see how you can use Xdebug's profiler to find bottlenecks in your applications. No knowledge of C is required to follow this session,but some basic knowledge would be beneficial for the first part.

Quicklink: https://joind.in/689

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26.Sep.2009 at 22:07 by Ben Dunlap

This talk was just what I needed to motivate me to install xdebug everywhere I develop, ASAP. Having come to PHP from a C background, I've been hurting for a debugger but just never bothered to spend the time learning about the capabilities of available packages.

Derick did a great job of highlighting the more useful-looking and impressive features of xdebug and I will be a devoted user of the package from now on.

One mildly distracting aspect of the talk was the trouble with KCacheGrind's UI. Derick handled it gracefully, though, so overall it didn't really detract. But maybe slides would work just as well in the future?

27.Sep.2009 at 05:12 by Joe Devon

This was a very busy time for me to attend a conference, but not knowing what to expect coming in, two guys sold me on clearing my schedule to attend.

One is Sebastien Bergmann and the other Derick Rethans. Both PHPUnit and Xdebug have improved my projects quite a lot. And Xdebug helped me step through what the Zend Framework's Front Controller et. al. really does.

I was shocked that so few people in the audience (and among those I've spoken to) make regular use of Xdebug. Sure, print_r is great, but there's something about following the flow of a program that takes your understanding to a new level. Especially if you're integrating your code into a large application.

This talk was one of the highlights of the conference for me.

Debugging with Xdebug

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