Think Hacker: Debugging on PhpStorm

PhpStorm is a great IDE for php development, it is powerful, light and fully featured.

Actually I am a fan of all JetBrains IDEs, these guys know exactly what developers want.

It is quite simple to configure it so you can debug your php code, you can add breakpoints, stop code execution, analyze variables. Debugging gives you a whole new level of help while developing. So here's how to do it:

1- Open your php.ini located in your php installation folder.

2- Add the following code, changing folders to your actual php location, this example is for xampp on windows:

[XDebug]

zend_extension = "C:\xampp\php\ext\php_xdebug.dll"

xdebug.profiler_append = 0

xdebug.profiler_enable = 1

xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger = 0

xdebug.profiler_output_dir = "C:\xampp\tmp"

xdebug.profiler_output_name = "cachegrind.out.%t-%s"

xdebug.remote_enable = 1

xdebug.remote_handler = "dbgp"

xdebug.remote_host = "127.0.0.1"

xdebug.remote_port = 9000

xdebug.trace_output_dir = "C:\xampp\tmp"

OBS: under linux or mac, xdebug will be a .so file under /etc/php/extensions folder

3- Restart apache on xampp, this enables Xdebug

If you have trouble enabling Xdebug like this or don't have xdebug installed yet you can use the phpinfo() output to auto-build a config step-by-step for you here: http://xdebug.org/wizard.php

Now for Phpstorm configs:

4 - File > Settings

5- Go to Project Settings > PHP