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I'd like to see the colors and formatting that can come with var_dump. In my php.ini html_errors is set to On. This is confirmed by phpinfo().

My PHP version is 5.3.3 on Ubuntu 10.10. Anybody an idea?

3 Answers3

17

You're looking for XDebug.

sudo apt-get install php5-xdebug
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

and you're done.

Maerlyn
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5

Note: Maerlyn's approach should be taken for its simplicity. I wasn't aware of php5-xdebug being in the repos. I've decided to leave this answer because I feel it adds some value to future readers.

    sudo apt-get install php5-dev php-pear

Install Xdebug 

    sudo pecl install xdebug

You should see something like: Installing '/usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs/xdebug.so' when it finishes installing. Make note of the 20090626+lfs portion.

Edit the php.ini

    gksudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Add this to it:

    zend_extension="/usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs/xdebug.so"

Restart apache

    sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now when you do a var_dump it should be formatted, this is assuming html_errors is On.

Eddie Flores
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you could use a javascript library to do the syntax highlighting. something like: http://alexgorbatchev.com/SyntaxHighlighter/ but there are many other options as well.

Jesse Cohen
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  • Thanks but this is for a development machine and I'd really like to be able to var_dump variables in PHP without having to load additional Javascript. –  Feb 12 '11 at 23:48