[Tutorial] How to add Xdebug to Laragon

leokhoa

You can add Xdebug to Laragon easily.
Method 1: Using phpinfo() & Xdebug Wizard

Copy phpinfo() content:
http://localhost/?q=info
Paste the copied data to the form in the Xdebug Wizard page
https://xdebug.org/wizard.php
Click "Analyse my phpinfo() output", and follow the instructions.

Note: Their instructions will ask for "4. Restart the webserver" but with Laragon, you just need to click Reload button.

mnelson4

@leokhoa I found I also needed to add xdebug.remote_enable=1 to the php.ini file. Otherwise, those steps worked great.

Michael Chean

Still can't get it to work. I place a break in my php program then open it in my Chrome browser and launch it using:
http://localhost:8080/operators.php
No luck.
I've got it working in XAMPP though.
My phpinfo reports:
This program makes use of the Zend Scripting Language Engine:
Zend Engine v3.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
with Xdebug v2.6.1, Copyright (c) 2002-2018, by Derick Rethans

Solution found:
Add the following 3 lines to php.ini
[xdebug]
xdebug.remote_enable= 1
xdebug.remote_autostart = 1

pfaciana

You need xdebug.remote_enable=1 if you plan to contact a debug client. Which I would suspect a lot of people would/should. However, it's not required, its just one feature of xDebug. You can still get a lot of value from xDebug even if it's turned off (which it is by default).

Also by off by default is remote_autostart. Setting xdebug.remote_autostart=1 will force xDebug to always attempt to connect to the remove client, regardless if the XDEBUG_SESSION is properly set. I actually don't believe this should be recommended for all. Most users should leave this off and use the XDEBUG_SESSION cookie instead. There are many browser plugins that can set this for you, and I should think that would be the recommended way. Remote debugging carries a large performance hit, and I've seen it cause issues in some edge cases. So I would think most people would only want that when they are actually stepping through code, and not every single time you make a request to the website. To each their own, but I felt it was important to point out just in case a reader was not familiar with what these settings do.

( Here are the all the setting if you want to read more: https://xdebug.org/docs/all_settings )

pfaciana

Here are the plugins/extensions from https://xdebug.org/docs/remote if interested...

Xdebug Helper for Firefox ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/xdebug-helper-for-firefox )
Xdebug Helper for Chrome ( https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eadndfjplgieldjbigjakmdgkmoaaaoc )
Xdebug Toggler for Safari ( https://github.com/benmatselby/xdebug-toggler )
Xdebug launcher for Opera

...You would use these as one option instead of setting xdebug.remote_autostart=1. Or you could just set the cookie manually, or by script, etc. More information on remote debugging is on that page as well.

Michael Chean

@pfaciana thank you - this is way over my head at the moment, but it gives me something to look into.

danieliser

What is the purpose of the PHP -> Quick Settings -> xdebug option? Clicking it restarts Apache & Nginx but doesn't disable xdebug (once installed per above method).

Is it purely for notification purposes?

mnelson4

@danieliser kinda a good question. As I understand it, it should really toggle xdebug on and off. So it sounded great but I haven't got it to work yet. (To enable xdebug, I followed the above instructions; and to disable it, I remove the xdebug lines from my php config file, save, and restart Laragon)
You should probably start a separate topic with your question IMO

Michael Chean

Ugh! My xdebug has stopped working in web mode, though running it with a local script works ok. It doesn't appear to be listening to the web server at all.

mnelson4

@Michael-Chean that's a mystery alright. You should probably create a new issue (feel free to ping me and I'll try to help)

Michael Chean

@mnelson4 Thank you, it was a boneheaded mistake on my part - sorry. Reinstalled using PHP Tools for VS Code and it worked.

leokhoa

@mnelson4 , @danieliser: I've released Laragon 3.5 which works well with xdebug in PHP 7.2+.

Michael Chean

I finally gave up on doing this myself. I'm using VSCode so I was able to install PHP Tools for VS Code by Devsense which installs Xdebug and some other useful tools. So far no problems!

P Mo

From the documentation on the official github page for VSCode PHP Debug extension, seems like all you need to do is to add xdebug.remote_connect_back = 1 to [Xdebug] section in php.ini. This will work for other clients too, not only VSCode with this extension. I think that vhosts are causing this problem and remote_connect_back tells the client what server address it should listen to