What free PHP Debugger you are using?

[bilis_money]

I'm planning to use XDEBUG.

 

Please give me advice which is the coolest free debugger in the internet that you had experienced?

 

thanks in advance. 

 

 

 

[neylitalo]

I'm a big fan of php -f and php -l; php -f <file> checks <file> for parse errors, and php -l <file> checks for syntax errors.

[bilis_money]

Yeah i think i already experienced using that before Neylitalo 

 

What i'm looking for now is a more robust debugger, that can find error on a very large and complex script.

 

This way it can point me to the specific errors immediately. 

 

 

Thank you for your ideas. 

 

 

[steelmanronald06]

Um, the one neylitalo gave you can find an error on a very large and complex script.  PHP Debuggers don't care how complex your script is.  It just checks your code to make sure it works right.  Any will work.

[bilis_money]

thanks steelman 

 

but what i'm really looking for is a visually appealing debugger. 

 

thanks anyway. 

 

 

[steelmanronald06]

how about a PHP IDE that has it? Like Zend Development Environement or PHP Designer 2007 Personal? They are great for writing code, they have variable trees, oop trees, project trees, and they have a great debugging tool! All you got to do is link to your php.inc file and your good to go.  Everything is settable in the options section. Zend Development Environment automatically detects those settings, though, in most cases.  So, just pick one of those and run with it.

[bilis_money]

thank you very much for that, i'll try that...

[Jessica]

What does it debug? I mean, the only thing that you can't figure out from errors and the manual, is logical flaws, and how can they catch those?

[neylitalo]

You might also look into unit testing. Check out PhpUnit.

[Azu]

Doesn't PHP have a built in debugger that is enabled by default?

[Stopofeger]

I so much need a debugger with callstack and breakpoints. But can't find any. I use maguma open studio which comes with dbg listener. I have everything installed but still dbg can't do debugging. Have you guys used dbg with maguma open studio?

[Sorthy359]

for those of you who are talking about php's default php debugger,thats not always the best.pretty much all debuggers use php.exe anyways.but you cant debug your entire script with only php's default debugger based off of executing one file.a problem may start on a file when u modify a different file.see my point?

[roopurt18]

I wrote myself a small debugging library.  It basically gives me three functions:

 

debug_add() : add a debug message to an array

 

debug_echo() : echo a debug message immediately

 

debug_dump() : dump the array populated with debug_add()

 

Everything is dumped inside of pre tags to keep the nice formatting of print_r.  Hasn't failed me yet.

 

I started programming with MS Visual products so I always had debuggers with break points, call stacks, and variable watching.  However, almost all of my programming in college was done in telnet, those wonderful black and white 80x23 (not sure on the height) windows; in that environment the only debugging tool I ever used was logging or printf statements.  After a year and a half of this I finally went into one of the computer labs where everyone was using nice IDEs with debuggers and they still couldn't get their programs to run properly.  Yet there I was with my 5 telnet windows chugging away at programs that worked and they looked at me like I was the crazy one.

 

Anyways, if you need a call stack in PHP, look into debug_backtrace():

http://www.php.net/debug_backtrace

 

Combined with echo and pre tags it has everything you need.

 

P.S. I'm not harping on visual debuggers, I think they're great tools.  But I've seen too many programmers that don't know how to troubleshoot their programs without one; it makes me a sad panda.

[Daniel0]

I just echo something in the script if I want to check something. E.g.:

if(whatever)
{
echo "hello";
// code
}
else {
// code
}

 

I've got xdebug installed just so I'll get a stack trace on fatal errors and such.

[neylitalo]

I've got xdebug installed just so I'll get a stack trace on fatal errors and such.

 

Whoa... I want stack traces. I might just have to check out this xdebug.

[448191]

Sarcasm doesn't really suit you Neil..

[neylitalo]

Sarcasm doesn't really suit you Neil..

 

Well, I wasn't really being sarcastic. Stack traces are very helpful when you're dealing with multi-layered applications.

[448191]

They're helpful always. You just might not need xdebug to get them printed...

[Barand]

I use Nusphere's PHPEd with inbuilt debugger. Breakpoints (conditional), watches, callstack, immediate code window to change vars during execution, ability to define GET,POST.COOKIE values, code highlighting, instant syntax error notification (red squiggles like Word spellchecker) to name but a few features.