Dumper

Every debugging developer is a good friend with the function var_dump, which lists all contents of any variable in detail. Unfortunately, its output is without HTML formatting and outputs the dump into a single line of HTML code, not to mention context escaping. It is necessary to replace the var_dump with a more handy function. That is just what dump() is.

$arr = [10, 20.2, true, null, 'hello'];

dump($arr);
// or Debugger::dump($arr);

generates the output:

You can change the default light theme to dark:

Debugger::$dumpTheme = 'dark';

You can also change the nesting depth by Debugger::$maxDepth and displayed strings length by Debugger::$maxLength. Naturally, lower values accelerate Tracy rendering.

Debugger::$maxDepth = 2; // default: 3
Debugger::$maxLength = 50; // default: 150

The dump() function can display other useful information. Tracy\Dumper::LOCATION_SOURCE adds a tooltip with path to the file, where the function was called. Tracy\Dumper::LOCATION_LINK adds a link to the file. Tracy\Dumper::LOCATION_CLASS adds a tooltip to every dumped object containing path to the file, in which the object's class is defined. All these constants can be set in Debugger::$showLocation variable before calling the dump(). You can set multiple values at once using the | operator.

Debugger::$showLocation = Tracy\Dumper::LOCATION_SOURCE; // Shows path to where the dump() was called
Debugger::$showLocation = Tracy\Dumper::LOCATION_CLASS | Tracy\Dumper::LOCATION_LINK; // Shows both paths to the classes and link to where the dump() was called
Debugger::$showLocation = false; // Hides additional location information
Debugger::$showLocation = true; // Shows all additional location information

Very handy alternative to dump() is dumpe() (ie. dump and exit) and bdump(). This allows us to dump variables in Tracy Bar. This is useful, because dumps don't mess up the output and we can also add a title to the dump.

bdump([2, 4, 6, 8], 'even numbers up to ten');
bdump([1, 3, 5, 7, 9], 'odd numbers up to ten');