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15 September 2009

How to Debug in PHP

By Kieran Masterton

Nobody enjoys the process of debugging their code. If you want to build killer web apps though, it’s vital that you understand the process thoroughly.

This article breaks down the fundamentals of debugging in PHP, helps you understand PHP’s error messages and introduces you to some useful tools to help make the process a little less painful.

Editor’s Note: We’ll be running workshops like “How to Build a Web App from A-Z” at The Future of Web Apps London.

Doing your Ground Work

It is important that you configure PHP correctly and write your code in such a way that it produces meaningful errors at the right time. For example, it is generally good practice to turn on a verbose level of error reporting on your development platform. This probably isn’t such a great idea, however, on your production server(s). In a live environment you neither want to confuse a genuine user or give malicious users too much information about the inner-workings of your site.

So, with that in mind lets talk about the all too common “I’m getting no error message” issue. This is normally caused by a syntax error on a platform where the developer has not done their ground work properly. First, you should turn display_errors on. This can be done either in your php.ini file or at the head of your code like this:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');

Tip: In these code examples I omit the closing (?>) PHP tag. It is generally considered good practice to do so in files which contain only PHP code in order to avoid accidental injection of white space and the all too common “headers already sent” error.

Next, you will need to set an error reporting level. As default PHP 4 and 5 do not show PHP notices which can be important in debugging your code (more on that shortly). Notices are generated by PHP whether they are displayed or not, so deploying code with twenty notices being generated has an impact upon the overhead of your site. So, to ensure notices are displayed, set your error reporting level either in your php.ini or amend your runtime code to look like this:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
error_reporting(E_ALL);

Tip: E_ALL is a constant so don’t make the mistake of enclosing it in quotation marks.

With PHP 5 it’s also a good idea to turn on the E_STRICT level of error reporting. E_STRICT is useful for ensuring you’re coding using the best possible standards. For example E_STRICT helps by warning you that you’re using a deprecated function. Here’s how to enable it at runtime:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);

It is also worth mentioning that on your development platform it is often a good idea to make these changes in your php.ini file rather than at the runtime. This is because if you experience a syntax error with these options set in your code and not in the php.ini you may, depending on your set up, be presented with a blank page. Likewise, it is worth noting that if you’re setting these values in your code, a conditional statement might be a good idea to avoid these settings accidentally being deployed to a live environment.

What Type of Error am I Looking at?

As with most languages, PHP’s errors may appear somewhat esoteric, but there are in fact only four key types of error that you need to remember:

1. Syntax Errors

Syntactical errors or parse errors are generally caused by a typo in your code. For example a missing semicolon, quotation mark, brace or parentheses. When you encounter a syntax error you will receive an error similar to this:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ECHO in /Document/Root/example.php on line 6

In this instance it is important that you check the line above the line quoted in the error (in this case line 5) because while PHP has encountered something unexpected on line 6, it is common that it is a typo on the line above causing the error. Here’s an example:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
error_reporting(E_ALL);


$sSiteName = "Think Vitamin"
echo $sSiteName;

In this example I have omitted the semi-colon from line 5, however, PHP has reported an error occurred on line 6. Looking one line above you can spot and rectify the problem.

Tip: In this example I am using Hungarian Notation. Adopting this coding standard can aid with debugging code while working collaboratively or on a piece of code you wrote some time ago. The leading letter denoting the variable type means that determining a variable type is very quick and simple. This can aid in spotting irregularities which can also help highlight any potential logic errors.

2. Warnings

Warnings aren’t deal breakers like syntax errors. PHP can cope with a warning, however, it knows that you probably made a mistake somewhere and is notifying you about it. Warnings often appear for the following reasons:

  1. Headers already sent. Try checking for white space at the head of your code or in files you’re including.
  2. You’re passing an incorrect number of parameters to a function.
  3. Incorrect path names when including files.

3. Notices

Notices aren’t going to halt the execution of your code either, but they can be very important in tracking down a pesky bug. Often you’ll find that code that’s working perfectly happily in a production environment starts throwing out notices when you set error_reporting to E_ALL.

A common notice you’ll encounter during development is:

>Notice: Undefined index: FullName in /Document/Root/views/userdetails.phtml on line 55

This information can be extremely useful in debugging your application. Say you’ve done a simple database query and pulled a row of user data from a table. For presentation in your view you’ve assigned the details to an array called $aUserDetails. However, when you echo $aUserDetails['FirstName'] on line 55 there’s no output and PHP throws the notice above. In this instance the notice you receive can really help.

PHP has helpfully told us that the FirstName key is undefined so we know that this isn’t a case of the database record being NULL. However, perhaps we should check our SQL statement to ensure we’ve actually retrieved the user’s first name from the database. In this case the notice has helped us rule out a potential issue which has in turn steered us towards the likely source of our problem. Without the notice our likely first stop would have been the database record, followed by tracing back through our logic to eventually find our omission in the SQL.

4. Fatal Errors

Fatal Errors sound the most painful of the four but are in fact often the easiest to resolve. What it means, in short, is that PHP understands what you’ve asked it to do but can’t carry out the request. Your syntax is correct, you’re speaking its language but PHP doesn’t have what it needs to comply. The most common fatal error is an undefined class or function and the error generated normally points straight to the root of the problem:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function create() in /Document/Root/example.php on line 23

Using var_dump() to Aid Your Debugging

var_dump() is a native PHP function which displays structured, humanly readable, information about one (or more) expressions. This is particularly useful when dealing with arrays and objects as var_dump() displays their structure recursively giving you the best possible picture of what’s going on. Here’s an example of how to use var_dump() in context:

Below I have created an array of scores achieved by users but one value in my array is subtly distinct from the others, var_dump() can help us discover that distinction.

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
error_reporting(E_ALL);


$aUserScores = array('Ben' => 7,'Linda' => 4,'Tony' => 5,'Alice' => '9');
echo '<pre>';
var_dump($aUserScores);
echo '</pre>';

Tip: Wrap var_dump() in <pre> tags to aid readability.

The output from var_dump() will look like this:

array(4) {
  ["Ben"]=>
  int(7)
  ["Linda"]=>
  int(4)
  ["Tony"]=>
  int(5)
  ["Alice"]=>
  string(1) "9"
}

As you can see var_dump tells us that $aUserScores is an array with four key/value pairs. Ben, Linda, and Tony all have their values (or scores) stored as integers. However, Alice is showing up as a string of one character in length.

If we return to my code, we can see that I have mistakenly wrapped Alice’s score of 9 in quotation marks causing PHP to interpret it as a string. Now, this mistake won’t have a massively adverse effect, however, it does demonstrate the power of var_dump() in helping us get better visibility of our arrays and objects.

While this is a very basic example of how var_dump() functions it can similarly be used to inspect large multi-dimensional arrays or objects. It is particularly useful in discovering if you have the correct data returned from a database query or when exploring a JSON response from say, Twitter:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
error_reporting(E_ALL);


$sJsonUrl = 'http://search.twitter.com/trends.json';


$sJson = file_get_contents($sJsonUrl,0,NULL,NULL);
$oTrends = json_decode($sJson);


echo '<pre>';
var_dump($oTrends);
echo '</pre>';

Useful Tools to Consider when Debugging

Finally, I want to point out a couple of useful tools that I’ve used to help me in the debugging process. I won’t go into detail about installing and configuring these extensions and add-ons, but I wanted to mention them because they can really make our lives easier.

Xdebug

Xdebug is a PHP extension that aims to lend a helping hand in the process of debugging your applications. Xdebug offers features like:

  • Automatic stack trace upon error
  • Function call logging
  • Display features such as enhanced var_dump() output and code coverage information.

Xdebug is highly configurable, and adaptable to a variety of situations. For example, stack traces (which are extremely useful for monitoring what your application is doing and when) can be configured to four different levels of detail. This means that you can adjust the sensitivity of Xdebug’s output helping you to get granular information about your app’s activity.

Stack traces show you where errors occur, allow you to trace function calls and detail the originating line numbers of these events. All of which is fantastic information for debugging your code.

Tip: As default Xdebug limits var_dump() output to three levels of recursion. You may want to change this in your xdebug.ini file by setting the xdebug.var_display_max_depth to equal a number that makes sense for your needs.

Check out Xdebug’s installation guide to get started.

FirePHP

For all you FireBug fans out there, FirePHP is a really useful little PHP library and Firefox add-on that can really help with AJAX development.

Essentially FirePHP enables you to log debug information to the Firebug console using a simple method call like so:

<?php
$sSql = 'SELECT * FROM tbl';
FB::log('SQL query: ' . $sSql);

In an instance where I’m making an AJAX search request, for example, it might be useful to pass back the SQL string my code is constructing in order that I can ensure my code is behaving correctly. All data logged to the Firebug console is sent via response headers and therefore doesn’t effect the page being rendered by the browser.

Warning: As with all debug information, this kind of data shouldn’t be for public consumption. The downside of having to add the FirePHP method calls into your PHP is that before you go live you will either have to strip all these calls out or set up an environment based conditional statement which establishes whether or not to include the debug code.

You can install the Firefox add-on at FirePHP’s website and also grab the PHP libs there too. Oh, and don’t forget if you haven’t already installed FireBug, you’ll need that too.

In Conclusion …

Hopefully during the course of this article you have learned how to do your ground work by preparing PHP for the debugging process; recognise and deal with the four key PHP error types and use var_dump() to your advantage. Likewise, I hope that you will find Xdebug and FirePHP useful and that they will make your life easier during your development cycle.

As I’ve already mentioned, and I really can’t say this enough, always remember to remove or suppress your debug output when you put your sites into production after all there’s nothing worse than all your users being able to read about your errors in excruciating detail.

Got a great debugging tip to share? Do you use a great little PHP extension that makes your bug trapping life easier? Please tell us about them in comments below!

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This post was written by

Kieran Masterton

Kieran Masterton is a Web Developer with over a decade of experience building sites for large media organisations like BSkyB and Future Publishing. Currently he's building indie film distribution and user-generated-screening site OpenIndie.com with co-founder and filmmaker Arin Crumley. For regular updates about this project and others follow Kieran on Twitter.

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