What are the best practices for debugging PHP applications with PHP Debug Console?

1 Install and configure PHP Debug Console

The first step to use PHP Debug Console is to install and configure it in your PHP application. You can use Composer to install the library and its dependencies, or download the files manually from GitHub. To enable the console, you need to include the autoload.php file in your PHP script, and create an instance of the Debug class. You can also customize the console settings, such as the theme, the channels, the output format, and the error handling. For example, you can use the following code to create a debug instance with a dark theme and a custom error handler:

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
use bdk\Debug;
$debug = new Debug(array(
  'theme' => 'dark',
  'errorHandler' => array(
    'catchErrors' => true,
    'catchExceptions' => true,
    'errorReporting' => E_ALL,
  ),
));        

2 Use the log methods to output data

PHP Debug Console provides several methods to output data to the console, such as log, warn, error, info, and table. You can use these methods to display variables, messages, errors, and exceptions in different formats and colors, depending on the severity and type of the data. You can also use the dump method to output the data in a collapsible and searchable tree view, which is useful for inspecting complex or nested data structures. For example, you can use the following code to output a message, an array, and an exception to the console:

$debug->log('This is a message');
$debug->dump(array('foo' => 'bar', 'baz' => 'qux'));
$debug->error(new Exception('This is an exception'));        

4 Use the timers and benchmarks to measure performance

PHP Debug Console also allows you to use timers and benchmarks to measure the performance of your PHP application. Timers are simple tools that you can use to measure the elapsed time between two points in your code, and output the result to the console. Benchmarks are more advanced tools that you can use to compare the execution time and memory usage of different code blocks, and output the results in a table or a chart. For example, you can use the following code to create a timer and a benchmark, and output the results to the console:

$debug->time('timer1');
sleep(1);
$debug->timeEnd('timer1');
$debug->benchmark('benchmark1', function() {
  sleep(1);
});
$debug->benchmark('benchmark2', function() {
  usleep(500000);
});
$debug->output();        

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?