Symfony, netbeans 6.8 and debugging a web page

Question

I am using Symfony (1.31) - with Propel ORM to build a website. I have recently moved from using a text editor, to Netbeans (6.8) as my dev environment.

Coming from a compiled language (C++) background, I am used to setting break points in code etc as part of debugging. Web development I have encountered (atleast with PHP), has been largely hit and miss - well debugging has been messy to say the least, using echo statements, logging stuff to file etc. Well I hear that it is possible to debug PHP (i.e. set breakpoints etc).

I have scoured the net for documentation to show how to set breakpoints (say in one of the MVC layesrs) so that when the relevant page(s) is opened via a browser, the breakpoint will get hit and I can step through the code (ideally, watching the program variables).

Is this possible using Symfony and Netbeans 6.8?.

Answer 1

I've used Gubed with Quanta+ as a stepping debugger with PHP, don't know if you can get that to work with Netbeans but I thought it was more hassle that it was worth. I found that I could for(i=0;i<~6;i++){dump stuff to screen/log; make changes; reload;} and solve an issue in less time than it took me to step through it once with the debugger.

Xdebug is a very useful PHP extension which features a remote debugger with support for some editors, though Neatbeans isn't listed. I've not used the remote debugging element of Xdebug (see above) but the profiling, code coverage and - in particular - improved browser error messages I find helpful.

Generally with Symfony I find I can get most of what I need from stack traces or by dropping items into the logger and picking them up with either the debug toolbar or firesymfony.

Answer 2

Here is what has helped me debug my Symfony apps:

Enable logging and the web debug toolbar via apps/appname/config/settings.yml. Note: Any changes will require clearing the cache.

dev:
    .settings:
        web_debug:              true
        logging_enabled:        true

Use var_dump() or print_r() with pre tags to dump data from anywhere. Adding exit; will allow you to dump variables from the controller or anywhere else.

echo '<pre>';
vardump($something);
echo '</pre>';
exit;

Enable logging and log messages. You can access the logger anywhere as well, but make sure you enable logging for your environment:

sfContext::getInstance()->getLogger()->info($message);

Answer 3

There seems to be support for XDebug: http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/php/debugging.html

If you have specific questions about configuring XDebug: http://wiki.netbeans.org/HowToConfigureXDebug.

More useful articles on PHP development in NetBeans: http://netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html.

Hope that helps.

UPDATE: Just installed NetBeans 6.8 and ran through the configuration and was able to get breakpoints to work successfully with XDebug. NetBeans' integration with Symfony is pretty slick too, +1 to question for getting me to check this out.