README

What is it?

An alternative to var_dump or print_r for generating structure information about variables to then be output.

Installation

Can be installed using composer by running the following:

$ composer require cruxoft/dump

Usage

For details on full basic usage and more complex examples see the examples/ folder.

Output Function

Some simple output based usage examples of the built in dump() function would be as follows:

use function Cruxoft\dump;

dump(array("one", "two", 3));
dump(true);
dump("Hello World");

Which would output:

array(3):
(
    [0] string(3): "one"
    [1] string(3): "two"
    [2] integer: 3
)
boolean: true
string(11): "Hello World"

The dump method can take an optional options parameter as a bitwise value of the required options. Available options are:

• INCLUDE_LOCATION: Gives the file and line number of the dump call.
• RELATIVE_PATHS: Sets paths to be relative to the project root. Requires CRUXOFT_ROOT constant to be set.
• DIE_AFTER: Calls die() after the dump method has completed.

use Cruxoft\Dump\Options;
use function Cruxoft\dump;

dump("Hello World", Options::INCLUDE_LOCATION);

examples/file.php@4
string(11): "Hello World"

Development

Docker

If your local environment does not have an upto date version of PHP installed there is a docker environment is included in the codebase for quickly building a development/testing environment.

Your installed PHP version can be found with the following command:

$ php -v

PHP 8.0.7 (cli) (built: Jun 23 2021 12:34:03) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.0.7, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies

It uses the latest PHP8 FPM image with composer added and can be built and entered:

$ cd docker
$ docker-compose -p dump up -d
$ docker exec -it dump_php_1 bash

The container can be torn down with:

$ docker-compose stop

Road Map

• Ability to specify formatting parameters for output of dump function
• Additional built-in conversions of structure data (json, xml, etc)
• Coloured output