Kint - debugging helper for PHP developers


What am I looking at?

At first glance Kint is just a pretty replacement for var_dump(), print_r() and debug_backtrace().

However, it's much, much more than that. Even the excellent xdebug var_dump improvements don't come close - you will eventually wonder how you developed without it.

Just to list some of the most useful features:

Installation

One of the main goals of Kint is to be zero setup.

Download the file and simply

<?php

require 'kint.php';

Or, if you use Composer:

composer require kint-php/kint

Usage

<?php

Kint::dump($GLOBALS, $_SERVER); // pass any number of parameters
d($GLOBALS, $_SERVER); // or simply use d() as a shorthand

Kint::trace(); // Debug backtrace
d(1); // Debug backtrace shorthand

s($GLOBALS); // Basic output mode

~d($GLOBALS); // Text only output mode

Kint::$enabled_mode = false; // Disable kint
d('Get off my lawn!'); // Debugs no longer have any effect

Tips & Tricks

• Kint is enabled by default, set `Kint::$enabled_mode = false;` to turn its functionality completely off. The best practice is to enable Kint in a development environment only (or for example `Kint::$enabled_mode = ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] === '<your IP>');`) - so even if you accidentally leave a dump in production, no one will know.
• Kint has keyboard shortcuts! When Kint is visible, press <kbd>D</kbd> on the keyboard and you will be able to traverse the tree with arrows, <kbd>h</kbd><kbd>j</kbd><kbd>k</kbd><kbd>l</kbd>, and <kbd>tab</kbd> keys - and expand/collapse nodes with <kbd>space</kbd> or <kbd>enter</kbd>.
• Clicking the <kbd>+</kbd> sign or the bar will open/close it.
• Double clicking the <kbd>+</kbd> sign will open/close it and all its children.
• Triple clicking the <kbd>+</kbd> sign in will open/close everything on the page.
• See the tiny arrows on the right of the output? Click them to open the node in a separate tab, or to show the access path for the value.
• There are a couple of real-time modifiers you can use: * `~d($var)` this call will output in plain text format. * `+d($var)` will disregard depth level limits and output everything. (Careful, this can hang your browser on large objects!) * `!d($var)` will expand the output automatically. * `-d($var)` will attempt to `ob_clean` the previous output. * You can combine modifiers too: `~+d($var)`
• To change display theme, use `Kint_Renderer_Rich::$theme = '<theme name>';` where available options are: `'original.css'` (default), `'solarized.css'`, `'solarized-dark.css'` and `'aante-light.css'`. You can also pass the absolute path to a CSS file to use that instead.
• `dd()`, `sd()`, and `ddd()` were removed in Kint 2, but you can make them yourself with helper aliases
• Read the full documentation for more information

Authors

Jonathan Vollebregt (jnvsor) Rokas ?leinius (raveren)

License

Licensed under the MIT License