Added symfony/var-dumper to aid with debugging.

Added app/Helpers/enhanced_dump_helper.php to aid with debugging.

Author: Mohammed Karim

app/Helpers/enhanced_dump_helper.php

@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+<?php
+
+/**
+ * Functionality used to help display data to screen in a nicer format than var_dump()
+ *
+ * ddd() is a quicker way o call pretty_dump(), they both do pretty much the same thing
+ */
+
+if (! function_exists('ddd'))
+{
+	/**
+	 * alias for pretty_dump
+	 *
+	 * @param variable $object
+	 * @param boolean  $die        set to false if you don't want function to die
+	 * @param boolean  $full_trace set to true if you want a full trace in the dump
+	 */
+	function ddd($object, $die = true, $full_trace = false)
+	{
+		pretty_dump($object, $die, $full_trace, true);
+	}
+}
+
+if (! function_exists('pretty_dump'))
+{
+	/**
+	 * dumps variables to screen and optionally die, and a full trace
+	 *
+	 * @param variable $object
+	 * @param boolean  $die        set to false if you don't want function to die
+	 * @param boolean  $full_trace set to true if you want a full trace in the dump
+	 * @param boolean  $ddd        did we get to this function from ddd?
+	 * @param integer  $trace_line set to numeric if we want only a certain line traced back
+	 */
+	function pretty_dump($object, $die = true, $full_trace = false, $ddd = false, $trace_line = null)
+	{
+		$fileinfo  = 'no_file_info';
+		$backtrace = debug_backtrace();
+
+		//if we want a full trace of whats happend
+		if ($full_trace)
+		{
+			$backtrace_data_i_want = [];
+
+			if (! empty($backtrace))
+			{
+				foreach ($backtrace as $back)
+				{
+					$backtrace_data_i_want[] = $back['file'] . ' - Line: ' . $back['line'];
+				}
+			}
+
+			if ($trace_line !== null)
+			{
+				dump($backtrace_data_i_want[$trace_line], $object);
+			}
+			else
+			{
+				dump($backtrace_data_i_want, $object);
+			}
+
+			//otherwise we only want the last trace data
+		}
+		else
+		{
+			$depth = $ddd === false ? 0 : 1;
+			if (! empty($backtrace[$depth]) && is_array($backtrace[$depth]))
+			{
+				$fileinfo = $backtrace[$depth]['file'] . ' - Line: ' . $backtrace[$depth]['line'];
+			}
+			dump($fileinfo, $object);
+		}
+
+		//should we die?
+		if ($die)
+		{
+			die();
+		}
+	}
+}

composer.json

@@ -11,7 +11,8 @@
         "ext-json": "*",
         "kint-php/kint": "^2.1",
         "psr/log": "^1.1",
-        "zendframework/zend-escaper": "^2.5"
+        "zendframework/zend-escaper": "^2.5",
+        "symfony/var-dumper": "^4.3"
     },
     "require-dev": {
         "codeigniter4/codeigniter4-standard": "^1.0",

public/index.php

@@ -35,6 +35,12 @@
 // Location of the framework bootstrap file.
 $app = require rtrim($paths->systemDirectory, '/ ') . '/bootstrap.php';
 
+// allow ddd() to be used throughout application if not production
+if (ENVIRONMENT !== 'production')
+{
+	helper('enhanced_dump');
+}
+
 /*
  *---------------------------------------------------------------
  * LAUNCH THE APPLICATION