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. You will eventually wonder how you developed without it.

Installation

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

Download the file and simply

<?php

require 'kint.phar';

Or, if you use Composer:

composer require kint-php/kint --dev

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

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::$enabled_mode = false; to turn it completely off.
  The best practice is to enable Kint in a development environment only - so even if you accidentally leave a dump in production, no one will know.
• See the buttons on the right of the output? Click them to open a new tab, show the access path for the value, or show a search box.
• To see the output where you called Kint instead of the docked toolbar at the bottom of the page add the line Kint\Renderer\RichRenderer::$folder = false; right after you include Kint.
• 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 and flush after printing.
  • You can combine modifiers too: ~+d($var)
• Double clicking the + sign will open/close it and all its children.
• Triple clicking the + sign in will open/close everything on the page.
• Add heavy classes to the blacklist to improve performance:
  Kint\Parser\BlacklistPlugin::$shallow_blacklist[] = 'Psr\Container\ContainerInterface';
• To change display theme, use Kint\Renderer\RichRenderer::$theme = 'theme.css';. You can pass the absolute path to a CSS file, or use one of the built in themes:
  • original.css (default)
  • solarized.css
  • solarized-dark.css
  • aante-light.css
• Kint has keyboard shortcuts! When Kint is visible, press D on the keyboard and you will be able to traverse the tree with arrows, HJKL, and TAB keys - and expand/collapse nodes with SPACE or ENTER.
• You can write plugins and wrapper functions to customize dump behavior!
• Read the full documentation for more information

Authors

Jonathan Vollebregt (jnvsor)
Rokas Šleinius (raveren)

License

Licensed under the MIT License