PHP Test Fest Munich

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:00:00 +0200

Yet another PHP TestFest call, this time for the Munich area (and even for all Southern Germany).

Johannes and I are trying to organize one or more TestFest days. No PHP internal knowledge is required (like C knowledges), all you need is willing to help to improve PHP and a good mood

So if you’re interested in meeting core devs and participating in the TestFest and possibly win a few nice prizes please take a look at the TestFest page to get more information and drop a mail to me (pierre at php dot net or use the contact form here) or Johannes (johannes on php.net) so we can plan this month.

Please note that we can also organize a TestFest day for an enterprise. It could be a good opportunity for a company to give something back to PHP, get contacts in the core teams as well as teaching their developers how to test PHP codes using phpt.

See the PHP QA page for more info about the Test Fest.

Happy testing!

Debugging symfony (or any php script) with vim and Xdebug

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:00:00 +0100

Xdebug is one of the best debugger and profiler for php (maybe the only good one in open source . The only problem is its lack of dedicated client (there is some work being done for a client but it targets only windows for now), however there is many plugins for many IDE or editors like Eclipse PDT or weaverslave and even for my favourite editor, Vim.

The vim plugin I will use here has been originally written by Seung Woo Shin and modified/improved by Sam Ghods. I find Sam’s version less noisy and seems to work better. As far as I rembember it is also included in Andrei’s vim script (I don’t have it at hand, but check the Andrei’s talk about php and vim, the url should be in there)

Xdebug setup

The first step is to install Xdebug, this procedure is well described in the Xdebug documentation. Check it out here. Don’t forget to enable the extension in your php.ini (the one used by your webserver, fcgi or cli) using

[Bash] zend_extension=/path/to/lib/php/extensions/xdebug.so

or if you use a debug build of php:

[Bash] zend_extension_debug=/path/to/lib/php/extensions/xdebug.so

Vim Setup

To run this plugin you will need the python interpreter in Vim, you can verify whether vim has it enabled or not using the following command in Vim:

[Bash] :version

Be sure to see "+python and +signs" in the list. If you miss them, recompile Vim with "—enable-pythoninterp" or install it using your favourite package manager. For Ubuntu, this command should give you all you need (ubuntu does not install a full vim per default):

[Bash] apt-get install vim-full python2.5

Fetch the plugin archive here

Extract the archive in your plugin directory, usually ~/.vim/ or /usr/share/vim/addon/. It should look like:

[Bash] /home/johndoe/.vim/plugin/ |-- debugger.py `-- debugger.vim

Begin a debug session

To tell Xdebug to initialize a debug session, you can pass an extra GET parameter called XDEBUG_SESSION_START:

[Bash] http://testsym.local/frontend_dev.php/home?XDEBUG_SESSION_START=1

The debugger will not start magiclly You have to ask the plugin to wait for Xdebug to send him a signal and the debugging data. Do it by pressing "F5" while being in vim and quickly switch to your browser to reload your page. If vim does nothing but idle after you pressed F5, double check the plugin install, it is not working.

And a little screenshot to show how fantastic are Vim and xDebug:

ps: how to make a pookey happy

The Pimp (Entries tagged as symfony)

PHP Test Fest Munich

Debugging symfony (or any php script) with vim and Xdebug

Xdebug setup

Vim Setup

Begin a debug session