Laravel-API-Debugger

Easily debug your JSON API.

When you are developing JSON API sometimes you need to debug it, but if you will use dd() or var_dump() you will break the output that will affect every client that is working with your API at the moment. Debugger is made to provide you with all your debug information and not corrupt the output.

{
  "posts": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "title": "Title 1",
      "body": "Body 1"
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "title": "Title 2",
      "body": "Body 2"
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "total": 2
  },
  "debug": {
    "database": {
      "total": 2,
      "items": [
        {
          "connection": "accounts",
          "query": "select * from `users` where `email` = 'john.doe@acme.com' limit 1;",
          "time": 0.38
        },
        {
          "connection": "posts",
          "query": "select * from `posts` where `author` = '1';",
          "time": 1.34
        }
      ]
    },
    "dump": [
      "foo",
      [
        1,
        2,
        "bar"
      ]
    ]
  }
}

Installation

This help is for Laravel 5.4 only. Readme for earlier versions can be found in the relevant branches of this repo.

PHP >=5.5.9+ or HHVM 3.3+, Composer and Laravel 5.4+ are required.

To get the latest version of Laravel Laravel-API-Debugger, simply add the following line to the require block of your composer.json file.

For PHP >= 7.1:

"lanin/laravel-api-debugger": "^4.0"

For PHP < 7.1:

"lanin/laravel-api-debugger": "^3.0"

You'll then need to run composer install or composer update to download it and have the autoloader updated.

Once Laravel-API-Debugger is installed, you need to register the service provider. Open up config/app.php and add the following to the providers key.

For Laravel 5.4

Lanin\Laravel\ApiDebugger\ServiceProvider::class,

Also you can register a Facade for easier access to the Debugger methods.

For Laravel 5.4

'Debugger' => Lanin\Laravel\ApiDebugger\Facade::class,

For Laravel 5.5 package supports package discovery feature.

Copy the config file to your own project by running the following command:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Lanin\Laravel\ApiDebugger\ServiceProvider"

Json response

Before extension will populate your answer it will try to distinguish if it is a json response. It will do it by validating if it is a JsonResponse instance. The best way to do it is to return response()->json(); in your controller's method.

Also please be careful with what you return. As if your answer will not be wrapped in any kind of data attribute (pages in the example above), frontend could be damaged because of waiting the particular set of attributes but it will return extra debug one.

So the best way to return your responses is like this

$data = [
    'foo' => 'bar',
    'baz' => 1,
];

return response()->json([
    'data' => [
        'foo' => 'bar',
        'baz' => 1,
    ],
]);

For more info about better practices in JSON APIs you can find here http://jsonapi.org/

Debugging

Debugger's two main tasks are to dump variables and collect anny additional info about your request.

Var dump

Debugger provides you with the easy way to dump any variable you want right in your JSON answer. This functionality sometimes very handy when you have to urgently debug your production environment.

$foo = 'foo';
$bar = [1, 2, 'bar'];

// As a helper
lad($foo, $bar);

// or as a facade
\Debugger::dump($foo, $bar);

You can simultaneously dump as many vars as you want and they will appear in the answer.

Note! Of course it it not the best way do debug your production environment, but sometimes it is the only way. So be careful with this, because everyone will see your output, but at least debug will not break your clients.

Collecting data

Note! By default Debugger will collect data ONLY when you set APP_DEBUG=true. So you don't have to worry that someone will see your system data on production. You can overwrite that by adding API_DEBUGGER_ENABLED=true|false to your .env file, or by changing the value of enabled in the config file.

All available collections can be found in api-debugger.php config that you can publish and update as you wish.

QueriesCollection

This collections listens to all queries events and logs them in connections, query, time structure.

CacheCollection

It can show you cache hits, misses, writes and forgets.

ProfilingCollection

It allows you to measure time taken to perform actions in your code. There are 2 ways to do it.

Automatically:

Debugger::profileMe('event-name', function () {
    sleep(1);
});

Or manually:

Debugger::startProfiling('event-name');
usleep(300);
Debugger::stopProfiling('event-name');

Also helpers are available:

lad_pr_start();
lad_pr_stop();
lad_pr_me();

Extending

You can easily add your own data collections to debug output. Just look at how it was done in the package itself and repeat for anything you want (for example HTTP requests).

Contributing

Please feel free to fork this package and contribute by submitting a pull request to enhance the functionalities.