A client side Glimpse to your PHP application
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A few months ago, the .NET world was surprised with a magnificent tool called “Glimpse”. Today I’m pleased to release a first draft of a PHP version for Glimpse! Now what is this Glimpse thing… Well: "what Firebug is for the client, Glimpse does for the server... in other words, a client side Glimpse into whats going on in your server."
For a quick demonstration of what this means, check the video at http://getglimpse.com/. Yes, it’s a .NET based video but the idea behind Glimpse for PHP is the same. And if you do need a PHP-based one, check http://screenr.com/27ds (warning: unedited :-))
Fundamentally Glimpse is made up of 3 different parts, all of which are extensible and customizable for any platform:
- Glimpse Server Module
- Glimpse Client Side Viewer
- Glimpse Protocol
This means an server technology that provides support for the Glimpse protocol can provide the Glimpse Client Side Viewer with information. And that’s what I’ve done.
What can I do with Glimpse?
A lot of things. The most basic usage of Glimpse would be enabling it and inspecting your requests by hand. Here’s a small view on the information provided:
By default, Glimpse offers you a glimpse into the current Ajax requests being made, your PHP Configuration, environment info, request variables, server variables, session variables and a trace viewer. And then there’s the remote tab, Glimpse’s killer feature.
When configuring Glimpse through www.yoursite.com/?glimpseFile=Config, you can specify a Glimpse session name. If you do that on a separate device, for example a customer’s browser or a mobile device you are working with, you can distinguish remote sessions in the remote tab. This allows debugging requests that are being made live on other devices! A full description is over at http://getglimpse.com/Help/Plugin/Remote.
Adding Glimpse to your PHP project
Installing Glimpse in a PHP application is very straightforward. Glimpse is supported starting with PHP 5.2 or higher.
- For PHP 5.2, copy the source folder of the repository to your server and add <?php include '/path/to/glimpse/index.php'; ?> as early as possible in your PHP script.
- For PHP 5.3, copy the glimpse.phar file from the build folder of the repository to your server and add <?php include 'phar://path/to/glimpse.phar'; ?> as early as possible in your PHP script.
Here’s an example of the Hello World page shown above:
1 <?php 2 require_once 'phar://../build/Glimpse.phar'; 3 ?> 4 <html> 5 <head> 6 <title>Hello world!</title> 7 </head> 8 9 <?php Glimpse_Trace::info('Rendering body...'); ?> 10 <body> 11 <h1>Hello world!</h1> 12 <p>This is just a test.</p> 13 </body> 14 <?php Glimpse_Trace::info('Rendered body.'); ?> 15 </html>
Enabling Glimpse
From the moment Glimpse is installed into your web application, navigate to your web application and append the ?glimpseFile=Config query string to enable/disable Glimpse. Optionally, a client name can also be specified to distinguish remote requests.
After enabling Glimpse, a small “eye” icon will appear in the bottom-right corner of your browser. Click it and behold the magic!
Now of course: anyone can potentially enable Glimpse. If you don’t want that, ensure you have some conditional mechanism around the <?php require_once 'phar://../build/Glimpse.phar'; ?> statement.
Creating a first Glimpse plugin
Not enough information on your screen? Working with Zend Framework and want to have a look at route values? Want to work with Wordpress and view some hidden details about a post through Glimpse? The sky is the limit. All there’s to it is creating a Glimpse plugin and registering it. Implementing Glimpse_Plugin_Interface is enough:
1 <?php 2 class MyGlimpsePlugin 3 implements Glimpse_Plugin_Interface 4 { 5 public function getData(Glimpse $glimpse) { 6 $data = array( 7 array('Included file path') 8 ); 9 10 foreach (get_included_files() as $includedFile) { 11 $data[] = array($includedFile); 12 } 13 14 return array( 15 "MyGlimpsePlugin" => count($data) > 0 ? $data : null 16 ); 17 } 18 19 public function getHelpUrl() { 20 return null; // or the URL to a help page 21 } 22 } 23 ?>
To register the plugin, add a call to $glimpse->registerPlugin():
1 <?php 2 $glimpse->registerPlugin(new MyGlimpsePlugin()); 3 ?>
And Bob’s your uncle:
Now what?
Well, it’s up to you. First of all: all feedback would be welcomed. Second of all: this is on Github (https://github.com/Glimpse/Glimpse.PHP). Feel free to fork and extend! Feel free to contribute plugins, core features, whatever you like! Have a lot of CakePHP projects? Why not contribute a plugin that provides a Glimpse at CakePHP diagnostics?
‘Till next time!
This is an imported post. It was imported from my old blog using an automated tool and may contain formatting errors and/or broken images.
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