Category Archives: Debugging

Why Doesn’t XDebug Work? It Used To.

Posted on September 18, 2016 by Martin Mapes

I found myself asking (again) why XDebug wasn’t working, after installing a new IDE. I’d set a breakpoint, debug the page, but never see the code stop. I had trouble getting it to run the last time I tried a … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Ical and Daylight Savings time in PHP

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Martin Mapes

The film festival I volunteer for is usually in February, but this year it takes place during the same weekend as the switch to Daylight Savings time. Years ago I built a link on each detail page that lets you … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, PHP, Web programming | Leave a comment

UTF-8 not working? Look for htmlentities.

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Martin Mapes

I converted all my sites to UTF-8 and it was relatively painless. However, on one of my sites, I kept seeing legal UTF-8 characters turning into gibberish. It happened after entering UTF-8, submitting a form and then redisplaying the values … Continue reading →

Posted in Character encoding, Debugging, Web programming | 2 Comments

A visual checksum for your PHP output

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Martin Mapes

Refactoring the code on my billing system, I was promoting a method to its parent object. If I did it right, the output from the code wouldn’t be any different before and after the refactor. Unfortunately, the output page was … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, Refactoring, Web programming | Leave a comment

Read it in the Sunday log files

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Martin Mapes

Today’s lesson: It pays to be in the habit of checking your log files. I make it a habit to check log files once a week. I set an alarm for every Sunday morning to remind me to check my … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, Webmastering | 1 Comment