CakePHP DebugKit

DebugKit provides a debugging toolbar and enhanced debugging tools for CakePHP applications.

Requirements

The master branch has the following requirements:

• CakePHP 3.0.0 or greater.
• PHP 5.4.16 or greater.
• SQLite or another database driver that CakePHP can talk to. By default DebugKit will use SQLite, if you need to use a different database see the Database Configuration section below.

DebugKit for CakePHP 2.x

If you want DebugKit for your 2.x application, you can use the latest 2.2.y tag or the 2.2 branch.

Installation

• Install the plugin with Composer from your CakePHP Project's ROOT directory (where the composer.json file is located)

  php composer.phar require --dev cakephp/debug_kit "~3.0"
  

• Load the plugin

  Plugin::load('DebugKit', ['bootstrap' => true, 'routes' => true]);
  

• Set 'debug' => true, in config/app.php.

##Troubleshooting These steps are shown to work in troubleshooting DebugKit installations in 2.2.x

• You may need to copy DebugKit from root/Plugin to app/Plugin
• If you don't have a config/app.php file, the file you are looking for is Controller/AppController.php
• Add 'DebugKit.Toolbar' to your $components array in Controller/AppController.php. If there's not a $components array, declare public $components = array(); inside the AppController class and add 'DebugKit.Toolbar' inside of it.
• Change the app/Config/bootstrap.php entry to CakePlugin::load('DebugKit');

Reporting Issues

If you have a problem with DebugKit please open an issue on GitHub.

Contributing

If you'd like to contribute to DebugKit, check out the roadmap for any planned features. You can fork the project, add features, and send pull requests or open issues.

Versions

DebugKit has several releases, each compatible with different releases of CakePHP. Use the appropriate version by downloading a tag, or checking out the correct branch.

• 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 are compatible with CakePHP 1.2.x. These releases of DebugKit will not work with CakePHP 1.3. You can also use the 1.2-branch for the mos recent updates and bugfixes.
• 1.3.0 is compatible with CakePHP 1.3.x only. It will not work with CakePHP 1.2. You can also use the 1.3 branch to get the most recent updates and bugfixes.
• 2.0.0 is compatible with CakePHP 2.0.x only. It will not work with previous CakePHP versions.
• 2.2.0 is compatible with CakePHP 2.2.0 and greater. It will not work with older versions of CakePHP as this release uses new API's available in 2.2. You can also use the master branch to get the most recent updates.
• 2.2.x are compatible with CakePHP 2.2.0 and greater. It is a necessary upgrade for people using CakePHP 2.4 as the naming conventions around loggers changed in that release.
• 3.0.x is compatible with CakePHP 3.0.x and is still under active development.

Documentation

Database Configuration

By default DebugKit will store panel data into a SQLite database in your application's tmp directory. If you cannot install pdo_sqlite, you can configure DebugKit to use a different database by defining a debug_kit connection in your config/app.php file.

Toolbar Panels

The DebugKit Toolbar is comprised of several panels, which are shown by clicking the CakePHP icon in the upper right-hand corner of your browser after DebugKit has been installed and loaded. Each panel is comprised of a panel class and view element. Typically, a panel handles the collection and display of a single type of information such as Logs or Request information. You can choose to panels from the toolbar or add your own custom panels.

Built-in Panels

There are several built-in panels, they are:

• Request Displays information about the current request, GET, POST, Cake Parameters, Current Route information and Cookies if the CookieComponent is in you controller's components.
• Session Display the information currently in the Session.
• Timer Display any timers that were set during the request see DebugKitDebugger for more information. Also displays memory use at component callbacks as well as peak memory used.
• Sql Logs Displays sql logs for each database connection.
• Log Display any entries made to the log files this request.
• Variables Display View variables set in controller.
• Environment Display environment variables related to PHP + CakePHP.

Configuration

There is no configuration at this time. Configuration options will be coming soon.

Developing Your Own Panels

You can create your own custom panels for DebugKit to help in debugging your applications.

Panel Classes

Panel Classes simply need to be placed in the src/Panel directory. The filename should match the classname, so the class MyCustomPanel would be expected to have a filename of src/Panel/MyCustomPanel.php.

namespace App\Panel;

use DebugKit\DebugPanel;

/**
 * My Custom Panel
 */
class MyCustomPanel extends DebugPanel {
        ...
}

Notice that custom panels are required to subclass the DebugPanel class.

Callbacks

By default Panel objects have 2 callbacks, allowing them to hook into the current request. Panels subscribe to the Controller.initialize and Controller.shutdown events. If your panel needs to subscribe to additional events, you can use the implementedEvents method to define all of the events your panel is interested in.

You should refer to the built-in panels for some examples on how you can build panels.

Panel Elements

Each Panel is expected to have a view element that renders the content from the panel. The element name must be the underscored inflection of the class name. For example SessionPanel has an element named session_panel.ctp, and SqllogPanel has an element named sqllog_panel.ctp. These elements should be located in the root of your View/Elements directory.

Custom Titles and Elements

Panels should pick up their title and element name by convention. However, if you need to choose a custom element name or title, you can define methods to customize your panel's behavior:

• title() - Configure the title that is displayed in the toolbar.
• elementName() Configure which element should be used for a given panel.

Panels in Other Plugins

Panels provided by Plugins work almost entirely the same as other plugins, with one minor difference: You must set public $plugin to be the name of the plugin directory, so that the panel's Elements can be located at render time.

namespace MyPlugin\Panel;

use DebugKit\DebugPanel;

class MyCustomPanel extends DebugPanel {
    public $plugin = 'MyPlugin';
        ...
}

To use a plugin panel, update your application's DebugKit configuration to include the panel.

Configure::write(
    'DebugKit.panels',
    array_merge((array)Configure::read('DebugKit.panels'), ['MyPlugin.MyCustomPanel'])
);

The above would load all the default panels as well as the custom panel from MyPlugin.

DebugKit Storage

By default, DebugKit uses a small SQLite database in you application's /tmp directory to store the panel data. If you'd like DebugKit to store its data elsewhere, you should define a debug_kit connection.