PHP Debug adapter for Visual Studio Code

How to install

Install extension:

Press F1, type ext install php-debug.

Install XDebug:

Download and install the XDebug extension. Then, in addition to zend_extension=path/to/xdebug, add these lines to your php.ini to enable remote debugging:

[XDebug]
xdebug.remote_enable = 1
xdebug.remote_autostart = 1

Also, if you haven't already, point your webserver's webroot to your project.

Don't forget to restart your webserver after you made these changes. Now, everytime you do a request to a PHP file, XDebug will automatically try to connect to port 9000 for debugging.

Start debugging:

In your project, go to the debugger and hit the little gear icon. Choose PHP. A new launch configuration will be created for you. Now, if you select this configuration and hit F5, VS Code will listen on port 9000 for incoming XDebug requests. Now, when you make a request to localhost with your webbrowser, XDebug will connect to VS Code and you can debug your PHP.

What is supported?

• Line breakpoints
• Step over, step in, step out
• Break on entry
• Breaking on uncaught exceptions and errors / warnings / notices
• Multiple, parallel requests (still a bit buggy but I think these are bugs in VS Code)
• Stack traces, scope variables, superglobals, user defined constants
• Arrays & objects (including classname, private and static properties)
• Debug console
• Watches

What is not supported?

• Conditional breakpoints (not yet implemented)
• Breaking on caught exceptions, this is not supported by XDebug and the setting is ignored
• Attach requests, there is no such thing because the lifespan of PHP scripts is short

FAQ

How can I get the error message when breaking on an error/warning?

Set a watch for error_get_last()

Where are the variables of the parent scope?

In opposite to Javascript, PHP does not have closures. A scope contains only variables that have been declared, parameters and imported globals with global or use. If you want to see the variables of the scope of the callee, click on it in the stacktrace.

Contributing

To hack on this adapter, clone the repository and open it in VS Code. You can debug it (run it in "server mode") by selecting the "Debug adapter" launch configuration and hitting F5. Then, open a terminal inside the project, and open the included testproject with VS Code while specifying the current directory as extensionDevelopmentPath. As an example, for Powershell on Windows it could look like this:

PS C:\Users\felix\github\vscode-php-debug> code .\testproject\ --extensionDevelopmentPath=$pwd

VS Code will open an "Extension Development Host" with the debug adapter running. Open .vscode/launch.json and uncomment the debugServer configuration line. Hit F5 to start a debugging session. Now, you can debug the testproject like specified above and set breakpoints inside your first VS Code instance to step through the adapter code.