Felipe Fidelix, Business Development Manager (UK) at Platform.sh spoke at eZ Conference 2017 on Debugging Effectively in the Cloud. Debugging PHP can be quite fun, if you just know how to do it. But what happens when you need to go beyond that? In his presentation, Felipe explains in depth how to debug PHP and related services using not-often-explored techniques like filesystem monitoring, mysql proxy interception, system call tracing, debugging remotely and a lot more.

1. Debugging Effectively in the Cloud
eZ Systems Conference, 8th
June 2017
Felipe Fidelix, UK Business Development Manager, Platform.sh

2. ● Code - the quick, dirty way;
● Code - step-by-step with an IDE and xdebug;
● Code - Profiling
● Process - real-time with strace;
● SQL - real-time;
● HTTP traffic - monitor and manipulate in real time;
● Debug remotely!
Debug all the things!

3. The quick dirty way - dump()
dump($mystuff)

4. XDEBUG
PHPStorm config - bit.ly/2s9DAT7
(Jetbrains website)
Step-by-step with XDebug

5. 1(or 2) - Set a Breakpoint
2(or 1) - Set your IDE to start listening
3 - Execute the code
Step-by-step with XDebug

6. IT WORKS!
Also - path mappings
Step-by-step with XDebug

7. Call stack = frames
Step over
Step into
Step out
Watchlist
More cool stuff
Step-by-step with XDebug

8. Step-by-step with XDebug
A neat real-time console!

9. Optionally setup to only debug when a
querystring "XDEBUG_SESSION_START=MYKEY" is
present.
Or cookie.
Xdebug Helper - chrome/firefox extension
Step-by-step with XDebug

10. Profiling in Platform.sh
[xdebug]
xdebug.profiler_enable=0
xdebug.profiler_output_dir="/tmp"
xdebug.profiler_output_name="cachegrind.ou
t.%R-%t-%s"
xdebug.profiler_append=On
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger=On
xdebug.trace_options=1
xdebug.collect_params=4
xdebug.collect_return=1
xdebug.collect_vars=0
?XDEBUG_PROFILE

11. Profiling

12. Xdebug does the profiling
Analysis: KcacheGrind
Analysis: WinCacheGrind
Analysis: Webgrind (php, composer-based)
Analysis: PHPStorm
Profiling

13. Strace
-e to filter syscalls
-o to output to file
-C for summary
-f follows forks
Real-time process-tracing

14. Wireshark
Network

15. Charles
Fiddler also
works.
HTTP

16. Continuous Deployment Cloud Hosting

17. Great developer automation/ workflow for PHP
Amazing performance and reliability for live service
Flexible platform for PHP
What does
Platform.sh do ?

18. Clone a byte-for-byte copy of
your production site in less
than a minute
Every git branch has a url
Eliminates QA bottlenecks
14x faster human testing and validation
Fail proof, predictable deployments
Quick bug fixes and security release
resolution

19. Git-driven infrastructure
With a single git push you can
deploy an arbitrarily complex
cluster (with micro-services,
messages queues and the lot.)

20. Multi-app, multi-stack, multi-cloud

21. Batteries Included

22. 20-40% better developer
productivity
90% Less Ops/DevOps
effort
40% faster User Acceptance
Testing
Measured impact
A second generation Platform-as-a-Service specifically designed for modern applications
* Based on customer feedback collected in 2015-2016

23. … debugging in Platform.sh
strace
$ strace -p $(pgrep php-fpm) -F -e file -C

24. … debugging in Platform.sh
PHPDBG

25. … debugging in Platform.sh
runtime:
extensions:
- xdebug
.platform.app.yaml

26. … debugging in Platform.sh
ssh -R 9000:localhost:9000 bud3vicgjrrsi-master-7rqtwti@ssh.eu.platform.sh

27. … debugging in Platform.sh
$ rsync -a {ssh-url}:/tmp/cache* /tmp/
?XDEBUG_SESSION_START=MYKEY
?XDEBUG_PROFILE
Alternatives:
Cookie
Xdebug helper

28. Profiling in Platform.sh
runtime:
extensions:
- name: 'blackfire'
configuration:
server_id: 'MY_SERVER_ID'
server_token: 'MY_SERVER_TOKEN'

29. Profiling in Platform.sh

30. Profiling in Platform.sh
platform project:variable:set --no-visible-build
php:newrelic.license
<your-new-relic-license-key>

31. Huge developer productivity gains & general savings
Gives them fast time to market for changes
Trust the live service to perform well
What will it do for
your customers ?

32. Questions?