Xdebug integration over FirePHP (through DBGP)

[abernier]

Hi,

FirePHP is a great and simple tool to display bebugging informations outside of a webpage.
Also I love the idea of extending an already existent and amaising extension that FireBug is.

But in my mind FirePHP could be really more than a var_dump alternative...

What about coupling FirePHP's power with Xdebug's one?
Have you heard about DBGP (A common debugger protocol for languages and debugger UI communication)? (MacGDBp already uses it)

If FirePHP could communicate with Xdebug(over DBGP), it would become the ultimate firefox extension for PHP developers.

Please give me your opinion about it. I haven't the skills to implement it myself but I wanted to share the idea because I really think it can be something amaising.

Cheers.

Antoine

[Christoph Dorn]

I agree that Xdebug (DBGP) is a good tool and that having a firebug extension for it would be great. There is an existing project to build an XUL app for Xdebug here: http://code.google.com/p/spectator/

Integrating Xdebug into FirePHP has come up several times in the past and while I think the two could work great together (I have many ideas on how to do it) it will require some significant effort to get it all working properly.

My focus is in other areas at this time. Unless someone else takes the initiative to drive this forward and contributes significant amounts of code I don't see it happening in the near term.

Maybe you can make some noise and attract some interest. I'll be more than happy to support any efforts to do this, but I cannot take the lead on it.

[radalin]

there is already an xdebug integration with netbeans 6.5 but I agree that it would be great!

I have read about dbgp article but honestly, I'm a bit lost in it. Basically, it was something like, send a request and get a message and I don't think it's much difficult to implement in the FirePHP. but I'm probably wrong.

Is there a simple article or how to or some kind of open implementation which will help me to better understand how this is done? Maybe I could spare some time to work on a thing like this. But first I got to find out the spec and how it will be done :)

thanks

[Christoph Dorn]

Take a look under the hood of: http://code.google.com/p/spectator/

I think it implements the protocol layer in javascript.

The protocol is not difficult to use. You simply connect to a port and listen for messages that are prefixed with a command type. You can also send commands to get a response. The protocol is documented here:

http://xdebug.org/docs-dbgp.php

If you are interested in driving this effort further I suggest the following:

- Port Spectator (provided the underlying code make sense)
- Contact the author of Spectator to see if he is interesting in participating in the port/integration and possibly helping out
- Refactor Spectator to run on a new extensibility system called FireWidgets that I am working on to allow extensions to be made to FirePHP/Firebug easily without linking the projects too tightly. FireWidgets is not ready yet and I need to add several new features to support such an extensive extension but I would be very interested to do so.

I have added a ticket for further discussion: http://code.google.com/p/firephp/issues/detail?id=92