Debugging tip: Xdebug Helper in Firefox w/ NetBeans

[SoyaWaxJim]

Hello NetBeans PHP team,

I am enjoying my initial use of NetBeans 6.5 for PHP. Here is a tip for those using Firefox and NetBeans that may be helpful.

1. Get Xdebug Helper add-on here.

2. Once installed, go to this add-on's Options dialog and set the idekey to 'netbeans-xdebug' as shown in the attached png image.

3. In NetBeans, kick off a debug session and leave it running. That is don't 'red button' stop the session. This, in effect, leaves NetBeans in the typical Xdebug 'listening' mode familiar to folks who have used other PHP IDEs.

4. Now you go to your Firefox browser and toggle debugging on and off with a click of the Xdebug Helper icon in the status bar. When on, NetBeans will hear the debug request and you are debugging. Once that page-rendering is done and you are back into Firefox, you can turn your debug session on and off at will.

5. When you are fully done with debugging, click the 'Finish debugger session' red button in the NetBeans toolbar and your are out of Xdebug listening mode.

BTW, if your default (under Windows) browser is Internet Explorer, your IE will stay in Xdebug session mode while you can then go over to Firefox and toggle debugging on and off as described above.

This ability to toggle Xdebug on and off is very useful when working on sites/platforms, such as content management systems like Drupal. Very often you want to debug form submissions and not every page load that may happen while interacting with a live site.

If there was anything on my wish list, it would be to have a 'Start listening' feature in NetBeans where you would not have to go through the initial run of a debug thread on the home page of a project site. The work-around described here essentially lets you get into listening mode. It would be cleaner/clearer if you would have this feature explicit in the NetBeans basic debug feature set.

Again, keep up the great work NetBean PHP team.

[radek matous]

SoyaWaxJim wrote: