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TYPO3 CMS Fluid Debugging Assistant

This package contains overrides and additions to the standard Fluid debugging utility in TYPO3 CMS. It replaces the normal debugging ViewHelper with an improved version that solves several known problems. In addition to dumping variables it also allows you to insert xdebug break points in Fluid templates via a ViewHelper.

The problems it solves

  1. The normal Fluid ViewHelper generates output either where it is used, or at the very top of the document before the doctype declaration. Either method has tremendous risk to destroy CSS rendering or be unreadable if used in a clipped or very tiny component.
  2. When you debug properties of an object in Fluid, the Extbase property accessor is used. This means two things: first, the data you look at is not the actual data, it is the public gettable data which has properties associated with it. And two, it will only show you data that has a property, i.e. no virtual properties which only have getters.
  3. Debugging a Fluid template means accessing a variable or ViewHelper expression twice, because the built-in debug ViewHelper will not return the variable it debugs.
  4. You do not want debug statements in your production code, but sometimes you would like to leave them in templates and make assertions on the output they debug - but you can't, because the debug ViewHelper produces output.

These problems are well known when debugging in Fluid. And this package solves all of them.

Installation

Install with Composer:

composer require namelesscoder/typo3-cms-fluid-debug

And if necessary, activate the fluid_debug extension in Extension Manager.

No configuration is needed, but the package only has functionality when the site is not in Production context. Note that it is not enough to switch the context in the TYPO3 backend if you also defined TYPO3_APPLICATION_CONTEXT in your virtual host - the one defined in your virtual host takes priority, so make sure it is set to Development or Testing.

The strategy

Instead of outputting content, the overridden debug ViewHelper instead delegates the output of variables to the JS console in your browser, by using PageRenderer to insert a call to a console.log() or other method, which receives a JSON object representation of the data you dump. In TYPO3 backend the ViewHelper dumps to the debugging console (which you can disable) and in CLI mode a regular var_dump is triggered (and xdebug break point if so configured in use).

This means the ViewHelper is safe to use anywhere as it will never produce debug output inside the DOM body.

An additional strategy is to allow the debugging ViewHelper to return the raw value it was asked to debug. This means you can use it as part of any inline expression to debug the value at that exact point. Consider the following example:

Long expression with debug in specific point:
{myVariable -> f:debug() -> f:format.striptags() -> f:debug() -> f:format.nl2br()}

Usage in argument value and arrays:
<f:render partial="Render{myDynamicType -> f:debug()}" arguments="{foo: '{my:vh(bar: 1) -> f:debug()}'}" />

Debugging an array costructed in Fluid while also passing that array:
<f:render partial="Foo" arguments="{f:debug(value: {foo: 'bar', baz: 1})}" />

Because the ViewHelper simply passes the value through, it can be left in place without causing rendering problems. This is a major difference compared to the native debugging ViewHelper which cannot be used this way without causing errors.

The FE/BE/CLI sensitivity also means you get the least intrusive output possible; except on CLI where the standard var_dump is used to produce markup-free dumps.

Dumping strategy

Contrary to the native TYPO3 CMS debug ViewHelper, the override dumps objects based primarily on the presence of getter methods which require no arguments - as opposed to basing it on the properties of a reflected object.

Why this?

The answer is that while Extbase dumping (which is what the native debug ViewHelper uses) is exceptionally good at dumping domain objects, it has shortcomings when the getter method you want to access doesn't have an associated property. Most prevalent example would be dumping a File resource which does not reveal all methods, including some of the most important API methods that are very useful in Fluid (example: metadata properties).

So by dumping based not just on properties but by the presence of getter methods, with either the get or has or is prefixes, this dump reveals every property that you can use in Fluid, rather than just those that makes sense in an Extbase persistence context.

Auto-suppressed in Production

The package silences itself when the TYPO3 application context is set to Production.

There are two main reasons for this:

  1. By auto-suppressing, it means it is safe to deploy templates which contain debug statements.
  2. Because debug statements output to console.log() or other, if you use acceptance testing with browser integration you can make assertions on variables passing through Fluid as part of your acceptance testing; variables which you don't see in the template output but are used to render it.

So rather than as you normally would, remove debug statements or suppress them with f:comment, you can simply leave them in there - they cause no output in DOM body, they pass the debugged value through, and in Production content they are replaced with completely transparent versions of themselves.

Usage details

The package currently contains two ViewHelpers:

  • An override for f:debug which is semi-compatible (also uses tag content to read dump value)
  • A specialised alias with reduced arguments, f:debug.break, which instead of outputting to console will create a dynamic breakpoint for xdebug so you can inspect the state in your IDE.

The f:debug override has the following arguments:

  • value which can be specified as argument value or is otherwise taken from tag content / child node
  • title which is a string you can use to identify the debug output - if not specified, the current template source code chunk and line/character number is shown if the template is not compiled (flush system cache to cause compiling).
  • level which is a string containing log, warn etc. - method name on the console object to be called.
  • maxDepth which is in integer, maximum number of levels to allow when traversing arrays/objects (note that infinite recursion is automatically prevented).
  • silent which is a boolean you can set to 1 if you want to suppress the output in console altogether.
  • pass which is a boolean you can set to 0 to not pass the dumped variable, useful if you for example have a separate <f:debug pass="0">{object}</f:debug> that would otherwise cause string conversion problems.
  • break which is a boolean you can set to 1 to cause an xdebug break point. Only happens if xdebug is installed.
  • compile which is a boolean you can set to 0 to disable compiling, letting you debug and break on the behavior the template has during parsing and compiling without having to flush caches repeatedly.

And the reduced alias f:debug.break has the following arguments:

  • value exactly like above
  • pass exactly like above
  • silent like above, but with default set to 1 to suppress output
  • break like above, but with default set to 1 to always break
  • compile exactly like above

In other words, f:debug is the main utility and f:debug.break is a customised alias which uses different default argument values, making it an ideal "insert breakpoint here" ViewHelper.

Note about using breakpoints

When you use break points with f:debug.break you don't just get the option of inspecting the variable you dump when the ViewHelper gets rendered - when break points are enabled, they trigger on the following events:

  • When the ViewHelper is initialized (when template is parsed, when ViewHelperNode is built in syntax tree)
  • When the ViewHelper is compiled to a PHP class (when you can dump for example the compiler's state)
  • When the ViewHelper is rendered (when you can inspect the actual value you want to dump, as well as other variables)

A handful of key variables are extracted for easier reading in your IDE. These include the template source chunk, the line/character number, all current template variables, whether template is compiled, and so on.

Note that you can also set break="1" on f:debug to cause an xdebug break point from that ViewHelper as well.

Important! Not all objects are possible to debug - when f:debug fails, f:debug.break and xdebug always works!