Re: Debugging classes

Vishal Patel schreef:

who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you emailing me

I'm fucking me actually. and I'm fucking mailing a fucking mailing list which apparently your fucking subscribed to. So now your fucking up to speed. Any other fucking questions?

On Jan 22, 2008 11:15 PM, Jochem Maas <jochem@iamjochem.com <mailto:jochem@iamjochem.com>> wrote:

    TG schreef:

I have a semi-good understanding of classes even if I don't

    totally 'grok'

the benefits for the projects I've worked on so far. One thing that keeps smacking me in the face, though, is reverse

    engineering

in order to make proper changes to projects created by others

    using classes.

In particular, I've been doing a lot of Joomla work and I end up

    doing a

global "find in files" trying to trace things back to see where

    they're

assigned, etc. In particular 2, "$this". I know it's a keyword meaing "the

    active object"..

I'm cool with that, but sometimes I need to make changes to how

    things are

handled, or what data is included. I can do a print_r and see

    what type of

object it is, look up the class definition, etc, but it still

    seems like a

pretty cumbersome way of doing things.

    debug_print_backtrace() is your friend. that said get an editor that
    supports
    debugging and install the required debugging extension on the server
    (which
    will probably be your local machine) this will allow you to initiate
    a debug session
    that allows you to step through the code line by line.

    I use Zend (debugger & IDE) for this, there are other options but
    I'm lazy and I've
    never had the patience to setup PHPEclipse+Xdebug (or something similar)

Anyone have any tips for debugging/reverse

    engineering/noodling-out classes

on big projects created by someone else? I figure things out eventually, I just want to speed up the

    process and do it

'smarter' if possible.

    debugging is a bit of a black art. the more you do it the handier
    and more comfortable
    you get at doing it. it's a bit like sex but with out the reward ;-)

Thanks! -TG

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-- Vishal Patel