How to use XDebug with Laragon + VSCode

[bernhard]

I love TracyDebugger, but today I had a hard time debugging some stuff and tried XDebug to get support for breakpoints. It was a quite straightforward setup:

• create a file on your server and output phpinfo()
• Copy the content of this page to the wizard: https://xdebug.org/wizard.php
• DON'T follow the instructions there, it's simpler with laragon (choose your files and paths of course):

Download php_xdebug-2.6.0-7.1-vc14-x86_64.dll
Move the downloaded file to C:\laragon\bin\php\php-7.1.14-Win32-VC14-x64\ext
Enable xdebug via laragon

• check if everything worked by visiting the phpinfo() page again - it should show a section about xdebug now
• enable validaton in vscode by adjusting the user settings:

  "php.validate.enable": true,
  "php.validate.executablePath": "C:/laragon/bin/php/php-7.1.14-Win32-VC14-x64/php.exe",
  "php.validate.run": "onType",

• install "PHP Debug" extension by Felix Becker and read the instructions
• enable remote debugging by xdebug by adding this to your php.ini

[XDebug]
xdebug.remote_enable = 1
xdebug.remote_autostart = 1

• create a testfile, eg home.php and set the debug config to "PHP"

• add breakpoints and start debugging by pressing the green play icon

• reload your page in the browser and the debugger will stop on lines 2 and 3 where we set the breakpoints. open vscode (if you don't have two screens) and follow code execution step by step.

 

There are also some videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poty5nKk2m4

 

If XDebug slows down your server you can simple enable/disable it via laragon. This will require only two clicks and reload apache automatically

 

[FrancisChung]

You're right about XDebug slowing everything to a crawl.

Have you tried these tricks involving the profiler and remote host?

http://www.sinaru.com/2015/09/25/improving-php-xdebug-speed/
 

[kongondo]

15 hours ago, bernhard said:

If anybody knows how to tackle this, please post the solution in the linked thread and I'll update this tutorial. Thanks

We did .

[bernhard]

Thx @FrancisChung and @kongondo, the quickest possible fix was to just copy laragon's php binary folder, rename it to php...-noXDebug and remove the .dll and comment out the section for xdebug in php.ini

You can enable/disable php extensions with a simple rightclick in laragon:

[stand-ground]

?

[bernhard]

28 minutes ago, stand-ground said:

?

Could you please tell us what you mean by that?

[stand-ground]

On 5/13/2018 at 3:01 PM, bernhard said:

Could you please tell us what you mean by that?

Whoops. Pasted the wrong emoji

[JohnClarkeAu]

Hi Bernhard,

Thank you for an excellent write up.

I can finally debug my WordPress plugins after several years of trying!

Cheers, John

[graziano]

Hello

I followed instruction at first step (  bernhard ) , all is ok , however .. at this step

"create a testfile, eg home.php and set the debug config to "PHP" "

I have something different in my Visual Studio , I have this


How can I proceed ? What folder should I setup and what is lanuch.json ? Really no idea at this step .

I want that when I click Ctrl+f5 ("run without debugging") Visual studio open the browser to http://localhost/myscript.php
but when I do this Ctrl+f5 , Visual studio ask me to choose an enviroment between PHP and Node.js , I select PHP but nothing happens.

 

[bernhard]

On 2/3/2020 at 2:35 PM, graziano said:

Sorry @graziano

I had to use and install XDebug today and stumbled over this as well. For future reference or others having the same problem this is what worked for me:

{
  // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
  // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
  // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Listen for XDebug",
      "type": "php",
      "request": "launch",
      "port": 9000
    },
    {
      "name": "Launch currently open script",
      "type": "php",
      "request": "launch",
      "program": "${file}",
      "cwd": "${fileDirname}",
      "port": 9000
    }
  ]
}

Fortunately VSCode now has a direct link and this file should be created automatically once you click on it:

Once the launch.json file exists the panel will change and you will be able to listen for xdebug: