Integrating Xdebug with the PHP interpreter

  1. Open the active php.ini file in the editor:

  2. To enable Xdebug, locate or create the [xdebug] section in the php.ini file and update it as follows:

  3. Remove or comment out the following lines in the php.ini file to disable the Zend Debugger and Zend Optimizer tools, which block Xdebug:

    zend_extension=<path_to_zend_debugger>
zend_extension=<path_to_zend_optimizer>

  4. To enable Xdebug, find or create the [xdebug] section in the php.ini file and update it as follows:

    [xdebug]
zend_extension = "<path to php_xdebug extension>"
xdebug.remote_enable = on
xdebug.remote_host = localhost
xdebug.remote_port = 9000
xdebug.max_nesting_level = 256
xdebug.remote_handler = dbgp
xdebug.remote_autostart = 1

    • zend_extension - define a path when the Xdebug library installed.

    • xdebug.remote_enable - this switch controls whether Xdebug should try to contact a debug client. You have to enable it to run debugging session.

    • xdebug.remote_host - specify the host where the debug client is running, you can either use a host name, IP address, or 'unix:///path/to/sock' for a Unix domain socket.

    • xdebug.remote_port - specify the port to which Xdebug tries to connect on the remote host. Port 9000 is the default for both the client and the bundled debugclient. As many clients use this port number, it is best to leave this setting unchanged.

    • xdebug.max_nesting_level - controls the protection mechanism for infinite recursion protection. The value of this setting is the maximum level of nested functions that are allowed before the script will be aborted. This option is used when working with large CMS and frameworks like Yii2, Drupal.

    • xdebug.remote_handler - can only be 'dbgp' to represent the debugger protocol. The DBGp protocol is the only supported protocol.

    • Xdebug.remote_autostart - when this setting is set to 1, Xdebug will always attempt to start a remote debugging session and try to connect to a client.

  5. Save and close the php.ini file.

  6. Restart web server after changes.

  7. Verify Xdebug installation by doing any of the following:

    1. In the command line, run the following command: 

      php --version

      The output should list Xdebug among the installed extensions:

    2. Create a phpinfo.php file containing the following code: 

      <?php
    phpinfo();
?>

    3. Open the phpinfo.php file in the browser. The phpinfo output should contain the Xdebug section: