Parallelbug

Parallebug solves the one major issue when dealing with debugging in either the console or in the browser (for backend code) - It dumps the data you want to see in a file for viewing in a separate tab so that it does not interrupt the current page.

The great thing about this is that it currently dumps the content in JSON format, which with the use of browsers extensions such as JSON View (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jsonview/chklaanhfefbnpoihckbnefhakgolnmc) allow the developer to easily see a variable's current value.

Because this is a micro utility, all you need to do is find the script in this repo for your language, copy the script, and use as per your setup. For instance PHP users just need to navigate to /php/src.

Requirements

All

• Read/Write permission for a folder

PHP

• version 5.5 (not tested in lower)
• JSON encode / decode (if using JSON formatting)

Python

• Support for 2.7 or 3.x (< 2.7 not tested)

Usage

Parallelbug::$dir = __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'logs';

Parallelbug::dump(array(
	'blah'
), array(
	'filename' => 'array'
));

This will create a JSON file called array.json inside a directory called logs in the same folder as this script. The JSON file will contain ouput of the first parameter.

{
  "__meta__":{
    "length":1,
    "type":"array",
    "timestamp":1401704939,
    "timestamp_pretty":"2014-06-02 12:28:59"
  },
  "dump":[
    "blah"
  ]
}

Parallelbug also has Python 2/3 support:

from xxx.Parallelbug import Parallelbug
import os

Parallelbug.dir = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "logs")

Parallelbug.dump([
	"foo"
], {
	"filename": "array"
})

Options

All of the default parameters can be overridden with the 2nd argument. Or if you find yourself using the same options over and over again you can override the default options:

Parellebug::$settings['meta'] = false;

All of the options are:

public static $settings = array(
	//'filename' => uniqid(),
	'format' => 'json',
	'meta' => true,
	'meta_key' => '__meta__',
	'date_format' => 'Y-m-d H:i:s',
	'append' => false,
	'data_key' => 'dump',
	'append_group_key' => '__append_group__'
);

Filename

As you can see the filename (when not provided) is automatically generated via a unique id. The unique key will change per language, aka PHP uses uniqid() and python uses uuid4().

If the file already exists and append is false then the file will be overwritten.

Format

Only JSON is supported at this moment, but other formats might be added.

Meta

Whether to add meta information: true =>

{
  "__meta__":{
    "length":1,
    "type":"array",
    "timestamp":1401704939,
    "timestamp_pretty":"2014-06-02 12:28:59"
  },
  "dump":[
    "blah"
  ]
}

false =>

[
  "blah"
]

Meta Key, Data Key, Append Group Key

These options just change the keys to use for the JSON file.

Date Format

The date format stirng to use to format the timestamp.

Append

When append = true the JSON file has appended onto it the next set of data. However, to keep it parsable by JSON the old data and the new data is encapsulated in an array:

[
  "__append_group__",
  {
    "__meta__":{
      "length":1,
      "type":"array",
      "timestamp":1401710279,
      "timestamp_pretty":"2014-06-02 13:57:59"
    },
    "dump":{
      "foo":"blah"
    }
  },
  {
    "__meta__":{
      "length":1,
      "type":"array",
      "timestamp":1401710279,
      "timestamp_pretty":"2014-06-02 13:57:59"
    },
    "dump":{
      "foo":"blah"
    }
  },
  {
    "__meta__":{
      "length":1,
      "type":"array",
      "timestamp":1401710279,
      "timestamp_pretty":"2014-06-02 13:57:59"
    },
    "dump":{
      "foo2":"blah2"
    }
  }
]

Note: If the file does not exist whilst using append = true errors will be thrown and no file will be created.