Best Debugging Tools For Php Developers In 2021

By Author: Jonathan Paul
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PHP is the most favoured and popular server-side scripting language. PHP is open-source in nature, is highly flexible, scalable, feature-rich, has strong community support, is well-documented, has innumerable in-built classes and functions, supports a wide range of frameworks like Yii, Symfony, Laravel, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, etc., and supports a host of PHP development and debugging tools that make it easy for the every PHP developer to build and debug the websites. 
 
Manually testing and debugging the sites are not easy at all. Running the thousands of lines of PHP codes and debugging the same is not that simple. But the debugging tools supported by PHP can ensure faster and simpler debugging of the codes no matter whether the website is created using custom PHP codes or using any of the PHP frameworks. 
 
Here’s the checklist of the best 6 PHP debugging tools developers must use in 2021. 
 
Xdebug:
Xdebug is an ...
... open-source and free-to-use debugging tool. This PHP tool provides much more than just debugging support and also helps to stack traces, code coverage, profiling, etc. Some highlighted features of Xdebug are:

You can easily add a breakpoint and then pause the execution of the script at any point of time to check the application or website state at the time. Most of the advanced PHP IDEs support this tool. 
It replaces print_r(), echo(), and var_dump(). 

 
Kint:
Kint is a good replacement for the function var_dump(), debug_backtrace(), and print_r() functions in PHP and offers a much better PHP debugging experience to the developers. This PHP debugger integrates easily with the PHPDebugbar plugin. Kint helps to present the debugging data in the simplest possible way. And some features of this tool are:

You can easily disable all the Kint output and can debug as well on the live environment. 
CLI is formatted and detected automatically. 
Variable contents are all displayed in an informative way and there’s no chance of missing anything. Kint ensures to display every content you are dumping. 

 
Whoops:
Whoops can be considered as a small library that is available as the Composer package and it helps to handle exceptions and errors in the PHP projects easily. It is an open-source library that comes with the features outlined below. 
 

Compact, clean, and a tested code base without any added discrepancies. 
XML and SOAP support.
JSON and AJAX support.
Code view for every frame in a stack trace along with line highlights. 

 
Krumo:
Krumo is designed to help PHP programmers to debug the variables using a simple block, which can be easily configured for displaying all the components in a given object or an array. This tool can display structured data about any of the PHP variables. Features of Kruma are:

It is an alternative to the in-built PHP functions var_dump() and print_r(). 
It prints out the stack of PHP variables using DHTML and CSS in a more readable and understandable way. 

 
PHP Debugbar:
This tool easily integrates into any PHP project and displays profiling information from any part of the project. PHP Debugbar comes with in-built data collectors. The tool displays the debug bar in the web browsers with the data from the PHP scripts. Some features of PHP Debugbar are:

It has a clean and easy-to-use interface.
Can handle AJAX requests
Re-opens and saves previous requests as well. 

 
A PHP debugging tool helps with not only the debugging of the errors or bugs but also help to address and fix the same, ensuring a flawless website at the end. And the best thing is that the developers can use these tools with any of the PHP frameworks or IDEs. In other words, dealing with PHP errors or bugs can be much easier with these above-mentioned effective and powerful debugging tools. 
 
Jonathan Paul is a dedicated and expert PHP developer associated with an award-winning PHP development company in Australia, PHPProgrammers. The author has written this article to let you know about the top 6 PHP debugging tools in 2021. 

Jonathan Paul is a techie, knowledgeable and highly skilled Magento Developer of Australia working with PHPProgrammers who like to share his industrial knowledge and insights with the readers.