how to debug large object in Magento 2 without var_dump?

Question

I usually var_dump($object->getData()); in my module to see what data it contains. Because of the injection dependencies , it looks like I can't do that anymore.

When I try it, nothing is printed out, which is likely because the amount of data connected to it is too large???

Can someone suggest an easy way to debug an object in Magento 2?

Thank you

Answer 1

Xdebug is the way to go. You can use Phpstorm in conjunction with Xdebug to pause execution of the code at designated break points and explore ALL data. I use it on Magento 2 every day.

In fact, I made a series of videos on how to install and configure

PhpStorm & Xdebug: Installation & Configuration

I hope this helps to get you going in the right direction!

Answer 2

You can use this method for log :

$om = \Magento\Framework\App\ObjectManager::getInstance();
$storeManager = $om->get('Psr\Log\LoggerInterface');
$storeManager->log(100,print_r($priceValue,true));

Here "$priceValue" is the object which you want to print.

Answer 3

I have found 2 ways of printing an object, either directly in the browser or in a log file in case nothing shows up on your page.

Directly in the browser:

print_r(json_encode($object->getData()));

As in my case using XDebug is not always possible (constraints from how things were setup here before), I created a log file to track my variables' values. Although it's clearly not best practise, but if you don't have a choice this can help out.

Debugging log file function:

function debugging_log($log_msg)
        {
            $log_filename = "{path_to_your_log_file}/debugging.log";
            $log_file_data = '[' . date('Y/m/d H:i:s') . ']' . ' ' . $log_msg;
            file_put_contents($log_filename, $log_file_data . "\n", FILE_APPEND);
        }

Same as for the print_r(), you pass a json object to the function like this:

debugging_log(json_encode($object->getData()));

It prints messages like this in the case of an object:

[2020/10/07 04:45:23] {"id":"5","key_1":"Title 1","key_2":"122","created_at":"2020-10-05 09:34:53"}

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Most objects have a ->debug() method, which displays less data than ->getData()

This comes in quite handy, when working with n98-magerun2 dev:console

$cm = $di->get(Magento\Customer\Model\Customer::class);
$cm->load(123);
$cm->debug();

# prints the customer's data