Debugging PHP Scripts

Mar 17, 2008 · 1 minute read
Category: php debugging

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When coding PHP, or more frequently when trying to customise or fix someone elses code, it can sometimes be tricky to figure out exactly what is going wrong.

In this kind of situation, it is often neccessary to go through the flow of the script and view the contents of the various strings and arrays at that stage of the script.

I have written this small function to help in this process:

function dbug($item){
	echo '<hr><h3>Debug Info</h3><pre>' . (var_export($item, true)) . '</pre><hr>';	
}

This script will take any item and print out detailed information for you in a nicely formatted and easy to read way.

For an example when you might decide to use this functionality, you could check the contents of your $_POST

<?php
/*very top of script */
dbug($_POST);