Making PHP var_dump() values display one line per value

Yes, try wrapping it with <pre>, e.g.:

echo '<pre>' , var_dump($variable) , '</pre>';

Wrap it in <pre> tags to preserve formatting.

I usually have a nice function to handle output of an array, just to pretty it up a bit when debugging.

function pr($data)
{
echo "<pre>";
print_r($data); // or var_dump($data);
echo "</pre>";
}

Then just call it

pr($array);

Or if you have an editor like that saves snippets so you can access them quicker instead of creating a function for each project you build or each page that requires just a quick test.

For print_r:

echo "<pre>", print_r($data, 1), "</pre>";

For var_dump():

echo "<pre>", var_dump($data), "</pre>";

I use the above with PHP Storm. I have set it as a pr tab command.

If you got XDebug installed, you can use it's var_dump replacement. Quoting:

Xdebug replaces PHP's var_dump() function for displaying variables. Xdebug's version includes different colors for different types and places limits on the amount of array elements/object properties, maximum depth and string lengths. There are a few other functions dealing with variable display as well.

You will likely want to tweak a few of the following settings:

There is a number of settings that control the output of Xdebug's modified var_dump() function: xdebug.var_display_max_children, xdebug.var_display_max_data and xdebug.var_display_max_depth. The effect of these three settings is best shown with an example. The script below is run four time, each time with different settings. You can use the tabs to see the difference.

But keep in mind that XDebug will significantly slow down your code, even when it's just loaded. It's not advisable to run in on production servers. But hey, you are not var_dumping on production servers anyway, are you?

I've also researched this issue and not found the right answer. This doesn't work for me:

echo '<pre>' . var_dump($variable) . '</pre>';

This will not provide a nice display of the array for me, with line breaks (I'm using Firefox 31.3.0)

However, after some experimentation, this solved the problem (notice the php is closed at first):

... ?> <pre><?php echo var_dump($variable) ?></pre> <?php ...

This solves the problem and displays a nice, easy-to-read array for me on my browser. You see how the tags are not wrapped in PHP; only the echo var_dump part is.

Use output buffers: http://php.net/manual/de/function.ob-start.php

<?php
ob_start();
var_dump($_SERVER) ;
$dump = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();


echo "<pre> $dump </pre>";
?>

Yet another option would be to use Output buffering and convert all the newlines in the dump to <br> elements, e.g.

ob_start();
var_dump($_SERVER) ;
echo nl2br(ob_get_clean());

var_export will give you a nice output. Examples from the docs:

$a = array (1, 2, array ("a", "b", "c"));
echo '<pre>' . var_export($a, true) . '</pre>';

Will output:

array (
0 => 1,
1 => 2,
2 =>
array (
0 => 'a',
1 => 'b',
2 => 'c',
),
)

You can press Ctrl+U to view the source code. Most Browsers will prettify the output there.

var_dump is the ugliest way to debug.

For me the right answer was

echo '<pre>' . var_export($var, true) . '</pre>';

Since var_dump($var) and var_export($var) do not return a string, you have to use var_export($var, true) to force var_export to return the result as a value.

I really love var_export(). If you like copy/paste-able code, try:

echo '<pre>' . var_export($data, true) . '</pre>';

Or even something like this for color syntax highlighting:

highlight_string("<?php\n\$data =\n" . var_export($data, true) . ";\n?>");

For devs needing something that works in the view source and the CLI, especially useful when debugging unit tests.

echo vd([['foo'=>1, 'bar'=>2]]);


function vd($in) {
ob_start();
var_dump($in);
return "\n" . preg_replace("/=>[\r\n\s]+/", "=> ", ob_get_clean());
}

Yields:

array(1) {
[0] => array(2) {
'foo' => int(1)
'bar' => int(2)
}
}

I did a similar solution. I've created a snippet to replace 'vardump' with this:

foreach ($variable as $key => $reg) {
echo "<pre>{$key} => '{$reg}'</pre>";
}
var_dump($variable);die;

Ps: I'm repeating the data with the last var_dump to get the filename and line

So this: Became this:

Let me know if this will help you.

I didn't wanna stop using var_dump($variable);die(); and using pre tags and loops seems overkill to me, so since I am looking at the dump in a browser, I just right click the page and choose Inspect (I use Chrome). The Elements section of the Developer Tools show the variable in a very readable format.

Personally I like the replacement function provided by Symfony's var dumper component

Install with composer require symfony/var-dumper and just use dump($var)

It takes care of the rest. I believe there's also a bit of JS injected there to allow you to interact with the output a bit.