var-dumper.md

Integration — Symfony VarDumper server

The Symfony VarDumper tool is essential for debugging PHP applications. It helps inspect and understand PHP variables clearly. Normally, dump() and dd() functions show their output in the browser or console.

A great feature of VarDumper is redirecting debug outputs to a remote server. Using Buggregator as the remote server, you can receive all debug outputs from your application, making debugging smoother and more intuitive for PHP developers.

For more details, check the official documentation.

Installation

To use the package, you first need to install it.

Just run the following command in your terminal:

composer require --dev symfony/var-dumper

This command installs the package development-only dependency in your project.

Configuration

You should change dumper format to server for var-dumper component. There is a VAR_DUMPER_FORMAT env variable in the package to do it.

VAR_DUMPER_FORMAT=server
VAR_DUMPER_SERVER=127.0.0.1:9912

or via PHP if there is no .env file in your project:

// Plain PHP
$_SERVER['VAR_DUMPER_FORMAT'] = 'server';
$_SERVER['VAR_DUMPER_SERVER'] = '127.0.0.1:9912';

That's it! Now you can use the dump() and dd() functions as usual. The output will be sent to the remote server.

Browser performance

VarDumper send data to the server in HTML format. So if you dump an object with a lot of properties and nested objects, it can significantly slow down the browser. To partially solve this issue, you can use VAR_DUMPER_PREVIEW_MAX_DEPTH env variable to limit the depth of the preview on the events list page.

All you need to do is add environment variable to a command that starts Buggerator server:

docker run --pull always \
  -p ... \
  -e VAR_DUMPER_PREVIEW_MAX_DEPTH=3 \
  ghcr.io/buggregator/server:latest

Note: Read more about server configuration here.

And the server will show only 3 levels of nested objects in the preview, but you can still see the full dump by opening the event page.

Syntax Highlighting

When you dump a variable that contains only text, you can enable syntax highlighting for it. The easiest way to do this is to use the trap function from the Buggregator Trap package.

All you need to do is install the package and use the trap function with context:

$code = <<<PHP
<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

echo 'Hello, World!';
PHP;

trap($code)->context(language: 'php');

And the output will be highlighted as PHP code.

Trap

Please consider to use Buggregator Trap to dump variables in your application. It uses the Symfony VarDumper component under the hood, but it's more powerful and has additional features.