• Development

    Using “php artisan serve” with xdebug and PHPStorm

    / October 29, 2021

    This is more of a person note for myself. This posts assumes some knowledge of php, Laravel, artisan, Homebrew, and xdebug.

    I’ve been using php artisan serve to serve Laravel applications locally. It’s quick and it works well.

    It’s probably not a great solution if you’re working with other people on a project, or if you want to implement a good CD/CI workflow. Having said that, it’s what I’m using today, so I figured I’d document how I got xdebug working with it (on my Mac).

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  • Development

    Remote PHP Debugging with Xdebug + PHPStorm or VSCode on Cloudways

    / June 21, 2021

    Here’s a quick breakdown of the steps required to debug a PHP site on a remote Cloudways server.

    Step 1:

    Enable xdebug for the whole Cloudways server:

    Server » Settings & Packages » Advanced » XDEBUG: Enabled

    Step 2:

    For the specific application in Cloudways, add some PHP settings:

    Application » Application Settings » PHP FPM Settings:

    Step 3: Setup SSH config for an ssh tunnel to the server:

    1. Edit ~/.ssh/config

    Step 4 (PHPStorm):

    Configure PHPStorm Preferences

    1. PHP » Debug » Xdebug » Debug port = 9003
    2. PHP » Debug » Xdebug — Check all four boxes:
      • Can accept external connections
      • Resolve breakpoint if it’s not available on the current line
      • Force break at first line when no path mapping specified
      • Force break at first line when a script is outside the project
    3. You shouldn’t need to configure servers, PHP cli, deployment locations, or anything similar…

    Try It

    1. Start an SSH tunnel: ssh mhd1_xdebug
    2. Drop a breakpoint in index.php (or whatever will surely execute)
    3. Visit the site, then wait for PHPStorm to prompt you for which file to connect to. Choose accordingly. It should connect and pause. You only have to do this once; it’ll remember the settings and path mapping in PHP » Servers.

    Step 4 (VSCode)

    Configure VSCode Preferences

    1. Install https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=felixfbecker.php-debug
    2. Click the Run and Debug sidebar icon (⌘⇧D)
    3. SSH into the server to find the exact path to the root of the site (which should match the root of your repo locally, your workspace folder)
    4. Add new configuration (you can disable the log option if things work well right away)

    Try it

    1. Start an SSH tunnel: ssh mhd1_xdebug
    2. Click Listen for Xdebug in the Run and Debug screen
    3. Drop a breakpoint in index.php (or whatever will surely execute)
    4. Visit the site
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  • Development

    Setting up xdebug for PHP 7 in Acquia DevDesktop

    / September 11, 2017

    The Acquia DevDesktop help page says:

    The PHP 7 version currently included with Acquia Dev Desktop does not currently include Xdebug. You can download an updated version of Xdebug here .

    Here are the actual steps I used. YMMV.

     

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  • Development

    Using Xdebug to Trace Functions

    / October 8, 2015

    I’ve been relying on Xdebug quite a lot in recent years to step through PHP code, analyze stacktraces, inspect variables, profile applications, and more. Recently I needed to find out why a function call was taking so long to execute. Using Xdebug’s trace functionality made this task pretty simple. Here’s how Xdebug describes function tracing:

    Xdebug allows you to log all function calls, including parameters and return values to a file in different formats.

    Those so-called “function traces” can be a help for when you are new to an application or when you are trying to figure out what exactly is going on when your application is running. The function traces can optionally also show the values of variables passed to the functions and methods, and also return values. In the default traces those two elements are not available.

    Having Xdebug trace your function calls is simple enough, and well-documented across the web. You can see my recommended settings at the bottom of this page, and here’s a good resource on the subject: http://devzone.zend.com/1135/tracing-php-applications-with-xdebug/

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