var_dump_server.md

Var Dump Server

You can use var_dump or dump() to inspect variables in the browser, but this is actually a terrible idea as often it will corrupt the output and leave you dazed and confused.

The Symfony var dump server provides you with an alternative. Instead of dumping to the output, it will dump to a CLI application which you have running.

Installation

Add the following to your config_local.php:

use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Cloner\VarCloner;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Dumper\CliDumper;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Dumper\ContextProvider\CliContextProvider;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Dumper\ContextProvider\SourceContextProvider;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Dumper\ServerDumper;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\VarDumper;

VarDumper::setHandler(function ($var) {
    $cloner = new VarCloner();
    (new ServerDumper(
        '127.0.0.1:9912',
        new CliDumper(),
        [
            'cli' => new CliContextProvider(),
            'source' => new SourceContextProvider(),
        ]
    ))->dump($cloner->cloneVar($var));
});

• 127.0.0.1:9912 is the address the server is listening on by default.
• We specify context providers: These tell us which file a debug message came from.

Usage

Run the server:

$ ./vendor/bin/var-dump-server

Use dump() in your code:

<?php

// ...

dump($something);

TIP!: The in Twig {{ dump(something) }} will not send information to the server - Use {% dump(something) %} instead.

Running in Docker

It is likely that the container running the web worker (php-fpm) will not be able to see the var-dump server running in a different container.

You may need to start a var dump server for each container (e.g. console and web):

Example:

# can see dumps from the web server
$ docker-compose exec web ./vendor/bin/var-dump-server

# can see dumps from the CLI
$ docker-compose exec cli ./vendor/bin/var-dump-server