Like you, I have many little functions that are useful for debugging in a page.
The problem is that when you start to pepper them around, whilst debugging, you can often times forget where you left them. A search isn't always helpful since I sometimes leave them in the code, but commented out, so I end up finding dozens of matches. What I need are some variables that tell me the current calling file, line and function I'm in. Then when I see some debug info on the screen, I know exactly where it came from. http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.constants.predefined.php are for the most part useless for this task, as they tell you information about the file, line and function name itself. This is a subtle but significant difference. Say I have a typical setup: common.inc.php -- has all my helper routines and fancy debug functions. mywebpage.inc.php -- the functions for mywebpage as I follow MVC logic. mywebpage.php -- the page I'm trying to work on and debug. If I place a print_x($foo) in mywebpage.inc.php somewhere, lets say in a function insert_into_database() on line 69, I would expect that __FILE__, __LINE__ and __FUNCTION__ to reflect all of that. It should return with "mywebpage.inc.php", "69" and "insert_into_database" respectively. What in fact happens is that I get "common.inc.php", "642", "print_x". If I use $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] instead of __FILE__ then I get "mywebpage.php" (not "mywebpage.inc.php" as desired) Now, the __FILE__, __LINE__ and __FUNCTION__ have their merit in some cases, but I think there needs to be another set of magic variables that are more dynamic and work as I suggest. Perhaps a __CFILE__, __CLINE__ and __CFUNCTION__ with the "C" prefix for "Current" or "Calling" /** * Print out a pretty, portlet, styled version of an array * * @param array $array Array to print out * @param boolean $var_dump use either print_r (false/default) or var_dump * @param string $string if set, this will print out in the title of the debug portlet */ function print_x($array, $var_dump=false, $string='') { if (!is_array($array)) { echo '<b>'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'::'.__FUNCTION__."(Not An Array) $string</b><br/>\n"; return; } ?> <div class="debug"> <div class="header"><h2><?= $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'::'.__FUNCTION__ ?>()<?= $string ?></h2></div> <div class="content"> <?php print "<div class=\"debug\"><pre style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0;\">\n"; if ($var_dump) { var_dump($array); } else { foreach($array as $k => $v) if (is_bool($v)) $array[$k] = ($v === true) ? 'TRUE':'FALSE'; elseif (is_object($v)) $array[$k] = 'CLASS::'.get_class($v); print_r( $array ); } print "</pre>\n</div>\n"; ?> </div> </div> <?php } function debug_print($var, $name='MY_VARIABLE') { if (is_array($var)) { print_x($var, false, $name); return; } echo '<span class="debug">'.__FILE__.'@'.__LINE__.'<b>'.$name.'</b> = '.$var."</span><br/>\n"; } -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
