New in Symfony 4.4: Improved dump() Calls in the Console

November 26, 2019 • Published by Javier Eguiluz

Warning: This post is about an unsupported Symfony version. Some of this information may be out of date. Read the most recent Symfony Docs.

Symfony 4.4 was released last week, but we'll continue publishing this "New in Symfony 4.4" blog series to mention some of its most notable new features.

Contributed by
Kévin Therage
in #31446.

In addition to new components and big features, new Symfony versions usually add "quality of life" features. These are little features that make you more productive and improve your developer experience in general.

The dump() and dd() helpers provided by the VarDumper component are a lightweight alternative when you don't need full-featured debuggers like Xdebug. However, these helpers behave differently in the browser and the command console.

In the browser, dump() and dd() display both the dumped contents and the file path and line number where they were called. However, in the console you only see the dumped contents, so you don't know where the helper was called:

In Symfony versions prior to 4.4, dumps in the console didn't show their location

Starting from Symfony 4.4, you'll see a ^ character next to the dumped contents. Click on it to go directly to the file and line where the dump was generated:

In Symfony 4.4, console dumps show a clickable marker which points to the location where the dump was generated

Published in #Living on the edge

Help the Symfony project!

As with any Open-Source project, contributing code or documentation is the most common way to help, but we also have a wide range of sponsoring opportunities.

Comments

ANDRIAMASY Eric Mathieu said on Nov 26, 2019 at 11:17

woooaoou!!! nice !!!!

Davey Hoogland said on Nov 26, 2019 at 11:27

Thanks for making the world a better place, once again!

Thomas Schulz said on Nov 26, 2019 at 13:09

Does Windows support this kind of console feature?

Javier Eguiluz Certified said on Nov 26, 2019 at 17:35

@Thomas support for this feature doesn't depend on the operating system but on each console/terminal application.

Here you can find a list of terminals/consoles/Apps that support hyperlinks: https://gist.github.com/egmontkob/eb114294efbcd5adb1944c9f3cb5feda

Manuel Transfeld Certified said on Dec 2, 2019 at 11:52

Waited sooo long for this small but powerful feature :) thanks

Sidi LEKHALIFA said on Dec 4, 2019 at 10:29

Thanks for this feature ^_^

I have one question : How to configure the Dump so that by default the list of array is closed?

Comments are closed.

To ensure that comments stay relevant, they are closed for old posts.