PHP Console allows you to handle PHP errors & exceptions, dump variables, execute PHP code remotely and many other things using Google Chrome extension PHP Console and PhpConsole server library.

• See presentation video.
• Install Google Chrome extension PHP Console.
• See how it works on live demo page.
• PHP Console extension features list and screenshots.
• PHP Console server library features list.
• Chrome extension source code https://github.com/barbushin/php-console-extension

• PHP Console extension must be installed on Google Chrome (extension source code is also on GitHub)
• PHP 5.3 (or later) on server.

For projects with PHP < 5.3 you can try to use old deprecated version of PHP Console. But mention that actual last version is much more functional.

{
	"require": {
		"php-console/php-console": "^3.1"
	}
}

Or

$ composer require php-console/php-console

https://github.com/Seldaek/monolog/blob/master/src/Monolog/Handler/PHPConsoleHandler.php

https://github.com/Vitre/php-console-bundle

http://www.yiiframework.com/extension/php-console

https://github.com/amenadiel/SlimPHPConsole (thanks to @amenadiel)

https://github.com/barbushin/php-console-silex (thanks to @Chi-teck)

https://github.com/barbushin/php-console-laravel

https://drupal.org/project/pc (thanks to @Chi-teck)

https://github.com/unfulvio/wp-php-console (thanks to @nekojira)

You can try most of PHP Console features on live demo server.

There is a PhpConsole\Connector class that initializes connection between PHP server and Google Chrome extension. Connection is initialized when PhpConsole\Connector instance is initialized:

$connector = PhpConsole\Connector::getInstance();

Also it will be initialized when you call PhpConsole\Handler::getInstance() or PhpConsole\Helper::register().

PHP Console uses headers to communicate with client, so PhpConsole\Connector::getInstance() or PhpConsole\Handler::getInstance() must be called before any output. If headers are sent before script shut down or PHP Console response package size is out of web-server headers size limit, then PHP Console will store response data in PhpConsole\Storage implementation and send it to client in STDOUT, in additional HTTP request. So there is no limit in PHP Console response package size.

By default PHP Console uses PhpConsole\Storage\Session for postponed responses, so all temporary data will be stored in $_SESSION. But there is some problem with frameworks like Symfony and Laravel that overrides PHP session handler. In this case you should use any other PhpConsole\Storage implementation like:

// Can be called only before PhpConsole\Connector::getInstance() and PhpConsole\Handler::getInstance()
PhpConsole\Connector::setPostponeStorage(new PhpConsole\Storage\File('/tmp/pc.data'));

See all available PhpConsole\Storage implementations in /src/PhpConsole/Storage.

If you want to see errors sources and traces paths more short, call:

$connector->setSourcesBasePath('/path/to/project');

So paths like /path/to/project/module/file.php will be displayed on client as /module/file.php.

If your internal server encoding is not UTF-8, so you need to call:

$connector->setServerEncoding('CP1251');

PhpConsole server library is optimized for lazy initialization only for clients that have Google Chrome extension PHP Console installed. There is example of correct initialization PhpConsole on your production server.

$connector->setPassword('yohoho123', true);

Clients will need to enter a password to get access to PHP Console server data. All passwords are stored on client as SHA-256 hashes. Second argument says that the PHP Console authorization token will depend on the client IP.

$connector->enableSslOnlyMode();

So all PHP Console clients will be automatically redirected to HTTPS.

$connector->setAllowedIpMasks(array('192.168.*.*', '2001:0:5ef5:79fb:*:*:*:*'));

There is a PhpConsole\Handler class that initializes PHP errors & exceptions handlers and provides the next features:

• Handle PHP errors (+fatal & memory limit errors) and exceptions.
• Ignore repeated errors.
• Call previously defined errors and exceptions handlers.
• Handle caught exceptions using $handler->handleException($exception).
• Debug vars using $handler->debug($var, 'some.tags').

Initialize PhpConsole\Handler in the top of your main project script:

$handler = PhpConsole\Handler::getInstance();
/* You can override default Handler behavior:
	$handler->setHandleErrors(false);  // disable errors handling
	$handler->setHandleExceptions(false); // disable exceptions handling
	$handler->setCallOldHandlers(false); // disable passing errors & exceptions to prviously defined handlers
*/
$handler->start(); // initialize handlers

PHP Console has multifunctional and smart vars dumper that allows to

• Dump any type variable.
• Dump protected and private objects properties.
• Limit dump by level, items count, item size and total size(see $connector->getDumper()).
• Dump objects class name.
• Smart dump of callbacks and Closure.
• Detect dump call source & trace(call $connector->getDebugDispatcher()->detectTraceAndSource = true).

Longest native debug method call:

PhpConsole\Connector::getInstance()->getDebugDispatcher()->dispatchDebug($var, 'some.tags');

Shorter call debug from Handler:

PhpConsole\Handler::getInstance()->debug($var, 'some.tags');

Shortest call debug using global PC class

PhpConsole\Helper::register(); // it will register global PC class
// ...
PC::debug($var, 'tag');
PC::tag($var);

Custom call debug by user defined function

function d($var, $tags = null) {
	PhpConsole\Connector::getInstance()->getDebugDispatcher()->dispatchDebug($var, $tags, 1);
}
d($var, 'some.tags');

• Debug tags argument is optional.
• Tags is a string with tags separated by dot(e.g. "low.db").
• Tags can be used to identify what exactly var was dumped.
• You can configure client to ignore displaying some tags.

PHP Console provide a way to execute PHP code on your server remotely, from Google Chrome extension terminal.

• Remote PHP code execution allowed only in password protected mode
• Every eval request is signed with unique SHA-256 token
• Result contains: output, return and time data
• Errors & exception occurred during PHP code execution will be handled

$connector = PhpConsole\Connector::getInstance();
$connector->setPassword($password);

// Configure eval provider
$evalProvider = $connector->getEvalDispatcher()->getEvalProvider();
$evalProvider->addSharedVar('post', $_POST); // so "return $post" code will return $_POST
$evalProvider->setOpenBaseDirs(array(__DIR__)); // see http://php.net/open-basedir

$connector->startEvalRequestsListener(); // must be called in the end of all configurations

There is PHP Console implementation of PSR-3 interface. to integrate PHP Console with PSR-3 compitable loggers(e.g. Monolog). See PhpConsole\PsrLogger.

Read this article if you want to configure PHP Console extension to open errors/exceptions source file:line right in your IDE, just by click on the button in Notification popup.

If you have used PhpConsole v1.x and want to migrate to v3.x without any code changes, so just use PhpConsole\OldVersionAdapter:

PhpConsole\OldVersionAdapter::register(); // register PhpConsole v1.x class emulator

// Call old PhpConsole v1 methods as is
PhpConsole::start(true, true, $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']);
PhpConsole::debug('Debug using old method PhpConsole::debug()', 'some,tags');
debug('Debug using old function debug()', 'some,tags');
echo $undefinedVar;
PhpConsole::getInstance()->handleException(new Exception('test'));

// Call new PhpConsole methods, if you want :)
PhpConsole\Connector::getInstance()->setServerEncoding('cp1251');
PhpConsole\Helper::register();
PC::debug('Debug using new methods');

But, anyway, if you can't migrate to new version of PHP Console because of using PHP < 5.3 on your servers, then you can use old deprecated version of PHP Console.