InteractiveVarDump

An interactive alternative to PHP's native var_dump() function intended as a mere development and debugging tool. As such, it is not recommended to leave these calls and imports lingering in the production environment.

It is interactive insofar as it lets you …

• … collapse and expand the individual children of the tree.
• … display the path of deep tree nodes by clicking on an array key or object property. Use triple-click for copy-n-paste.
• … click on the Z button in the top right corner in order to adjust z-index on the fly. If, for example, a website element like a header bar is partially blocking the view. Type directly in the "z-indexer" box; hold ↑ or ↓; or use the mousewheel while hovering over the box.

Note: Does not work with some few data types, i.e.:

• DOMDocument due to a bug in the Reflection framework: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=48527
• RecursiveDirectoryIterator

　​

Setup

Download the zip / tarball and unpack it, then require or include the file InteractiveVarDump/autoload.php into your working environment as shown in the examples below, in order to get access to the global wrapper functions ivd and qvd.

　​

Basic Usage

If you prefer working with classes:

require_once InteractiveVarDump/autoload.php;

$user = get_user();

// Variant #1:
InteractiveVarDump::dump($user);

// Variant #2:
IVD::dump($user);

// Variant #3:
ivd($user);

　​

Make use of the optional second argument or PHP's native compact() function in order to distinguish several trees and values from one another:

Example #1:

ivd($price, 'before conversion');

$price = convert($price);

ivd($price, 'after');

　​

Example #2:

public function calculate( ...$args ) {

	ivd($args, __METHOD__);

	// …
}

　​

Example #3:

$teamA = $defender->getPlayers();
$teamB = $challenger->getPlayers();
$score = $game->getScore();

ivd(compact('teamA', 'teamB', 'score'));

Example #4:

foreach ($rows as $row) {
	ivd($row, 'row', array('indent' => 0));

	foreach ($row as $field => $value) {
		ivd(array(
			'field' => $field,
			'formatted' => formatter($value),

		), 'each value', array('indent' => 1));
		// …
	}
}

　​

If, in rare cases, you wish to skip the CSS and JavaScript includes, you can use either of these following shorthands for what you possibly would have done anyway:

qvd($my_var);
IVD::simple($my_var);

// →
echo '<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">'; var_dump($my_var); echo '</pre><br />';

Note: This simpler, secondary shorthand also supports the pretext, but not the configuration argument.

　​

Depending on the complexity of the dumped variable, additional overhead links will appear automatically in the head of the tree.

Link	Functionality
toggle-break inline	Values appear either in the same line or in a new line. If you prefer that part of the native var_dump().
toggle-show public properties	Show or hide all public properties.
toggle-show private properties	Show or hide all private properties.
batch-collapse	Recursively collapse all child and grandchild objects and arrays; but not the root.
batch-expand	Recursively expands all child and grandchild objects and arrays.

　​

Note: The tool automatically detects and marks strings if they contain HTML-entities.

Compare how, although being displayed in the browser as Kirby's Dream Course, the string value is actually Kirby's Dream Course.

　​

Extended Usage

Optionally, you can add a configuration array as a third parameter for some light extra functionality.

Option	Type	Default	Description
return	boolean	FALSE	Set to TRUE in order to get the tree as a return value instead.
color	string	all	If neither the key/value nor the link colorization is for you, you can deactivate those colors granularly: [ all, link, box, none ].
max_depth	integer	10	By default, a check for too deep nesting is implemented in order to prevent a fatal exception for circular object references. Modify the depth to your needs. Minimal value: 2.
indent	integer	0	Indentation level. Indent the box in increments of 15px; supports up to 20.
start_collapsed	boolean	FALSE	Will have the root-node collapsed on page-load.
z_index	integer|numstring	-	Set a starting z_index CSS value on page-load.

　​

Depencendies

• PHP 7.4
• jQuery v1.11.0