PHP: A prettier way to var_dump

There are various ways to dump information about a variable/object in PHP. Typically, you'd use them in a breakpoint-y fashion by inserting some dump function and hitting the endpoint to trigger the code. You hit the endpoint by curl-ing or visiting its URL, and you realize that the output is unreadable:

^ var_dump

^ var_export

^ print_r

This happens because none of them formats the output for HTML rendering (as it shouldn't!), which makes it extra difficult to parse when you have a large object.

Here's how I make it pretty: #

1<?php
2
3function d($obj): string {
4    return highlight_string("<?php\n" . print_r($obj, true) . "\n", true);
5}
6echo(d($dogsBySize));

This embeds the output of print_r inside highlight_string to make it render nicely:

It's a tremendous improvement in readability. If you want to skip having to echo() the output, make the function dump it directly instead of returning it:

1<?php
2
3function d($obj) {
4    highlight_string("<?php\n" . print_r($obj, true) . "\n", false);
5}
6d($dogsBySize);

Alternatively, check out Xdebug's improved var_dump.