Comments on: Debugging PHP using Xdebug and Notepad++ : Part I

By: Sandesh

Sandesh — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:55:42 +0000

Hi all,
I am having a unique problem. Cant find the solution anywhere. First I was using Eclipse to debug PHP pages. It worked perfectly with xdebug. Once while clicking debug button I accidentally pressed the cancel button for debugging. Thats when the whole problem started.
PROBLEM -> while clicking the debug button, my site opens in firefox browser with the address http://localhost/sitabookslive/index.php?XDEBUG_SESSION_START= but the control is not passed back to the editor to start debugging. Instead the site opens up normally and eclipse says Launching: Waiting for xdebug session.
Now I tried the above method in Notepad++ and the same thing continues here. Even after putting breakpoints in NP++, the control doesnot pass back to NP++ , instead the site opens normally. Could someone please help me out with this. I checked the port, changed the port number, checked xdebug in phpinfo() and everything seems perfect. Netstat says the port no 9000 is in Listening status. dont know how to proceed. Any help is very much appreciated. Thank you.

By: Erico Lendzian

Erico Lendzian — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:35:59 +0000

Thanks. A long time ago I managed to set up my development environment to use xdebug, but I had to re-install my box and then it was all lost.
I tested many applications that suposedly had debug capabilities, but all of them fail at one point or the other (mainly debugging a live page opened in the browser)
For the information of those trying to do the same, I’ll advise them to use firefox with the xdebug extension installed, and all goes perfectly. And set DBG inside Notepad++ to refresh the contexts at all time.

By: Kumar Chetan Sharma

Kumar Chetan Sharma — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:25:30 +0000

I stopped using NP++ the day I moved to Karmic Koala full time, now I use SciTE. You must be aware that NP++ is based on SciTE. If you install PHP-CLI package you can simply press ctrl+F7 to check your code for PHP error etc. Though its not as good as a debugger it still helps a lot.

By: David Potter

David Potter — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:55:37 +0000

Thank you Jithendra for your article. The documentation for using this plugin is extremely sparse and you got me far enough to start working. With that said, I’m still having trouble getting it working properly.

I’m using IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2 and PHP 5.3.0 and the Firefox Xdebug plugin. Note that when using the Firefox plugin I had to remove the xdebug.idekey setting in my php.ini file.

When I debug a simple test script, setting a breakpoint doesn’t work at all. The taskbar icon for Notepad++ flashes, but it didn’t break at the line. When I call xdebug_break(), then Notepad++ breaks.

I tried this same procedure with a larger system (WP.osC, a derivative of osCommerce) and it doesn’t break.

It would appear that there are some incompatibilities between the Notepad++ DBGp plugin and one of the components in use, maybe PHP 5.3.0 as a previous comment suggested. Too bad, as this is a really nice solution.

One other problem I ran into. The keyboard shortcuts don’t appear to work at all. I tried pressing F8 to step over and nothing happened.

If anyone has any ideas on how to solve these problems, I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks,
David

By: Jitendra

Jitendra — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:46:13 +0000

@opolette : Yes I’m using Apache rewrite but it was working fine with earlier Notepad++ version. Something somewhere went wrong and it stopped working.

I’d try your suggestions and post the result here.
Thanks.

By: opolette

opolette — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:15:55 +0000

To Jitendra :

May be it is related to SEF. Have your setup URL rewrite ?
If yes, try disabling it.
use xdebug_break(); in your code (instead of just setting breakpoints using DBGp) . and see if it works.

Best Regards

By: MIvan

MIvan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:09:17 +0000

127.0.0.1 is not realy a remote IP.
How to get working with a remote server?

By: Amit Kumar Singh

Amit Kumar Singh — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:37:45 +0000

Jitendra, then i am sorry i won’t be of much help.. as i need to actully see the error to tell you what is wrong.

If you followed the steps properly and selected the right xdebug dll for you php then it should work.

By: Jitendra

Jitendra — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:27:24 +0000

Amit, I’ve already seen your ‘part 2′ but I didn’t see anything specific which could solve my problem. I did exactly as you mentioned still I get above mentioned errors. Thanks.

By: Amit Kumar Singh

Amit Kumar Singh — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:24:43 +0000

@jitendra please check out the Debugging PHP using Xdebug and Notepad++ : Part 2