We’ll do a quick walk-through to get started with error logging.

Prepare php.ini

There are a few options that need to be set in php.ini to make proper logging possible. If you don’t have access to php.ini you can attempt to set the options at runtime (your mileage may vary.) An alternative to using php.ini is setting directives in an .htaccess file, but I won’t be discussing it in this post.

error_reporting  =  E_ALL
display_errors = Off
log_errors = On
error_log = /file/writeable/by/web/server/

Let’s look at this options a bit closer to understand what they do. error_reporting can take a number or different settings that grant an entire discussion all their own. I like using E_ALL which can be a little chatty at times, but can help to write better code. With PHP 5 E_STRICT has also been included, and has to be declared explicitly (not included in E_ALL.) This setting doesn’t provide additional logging, but gives recommendations to write even cleaner code.

display_errors is usually turned on during development, and turned off when going into production. If you are using logging, you’ll soon realize that it’s not necessary to turn this on at all.

log_errors is almost self explanatory, but could cause a newcomer to wonder why log files aren’t being written. This is the first place you should look if you aren’t getting logging information.

error_log has to be set to the path of a file writable by the web server; this is the second place you should look if your logs aren’t working. File ownership and permissions aren’t as daunting as they seem and you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor by learning how to apply them properly. If log_errors isn’t turned on, then this setting will have no effect whatsoever.

Set Up Your Box

This is where the rubber meets the road. Once you have all your settings in place and you’ve verified that errors are written to the log, it’s time to start using it. Open a terminal (command line as some folks call it) and give it the following command:

tail -f /log/file

The tail command retrieves the last 10 lines of a given file, the -f switch tells it to do it in real time. That is to say, that the display will be updated each time there’s a new entry in the log as opposed to having to run the command each time you want to see what’s going on. Leave this terminal running at all times and make it the first thing you glance at when something isn’t working right.

Talk To The Log, It Listens

So far you are able to view errors generated by PHP which is incedibly useful, but how about sending your own messages to the log? Enter error_log. This function allows you (in its simplest form) to send a custom message to the log. Let’s see an example, enter the following bit of code in a file and access it with your browser.

<?php
if ( 1 > 0 )
{
    error_log('it would be weird to NOT get this message');
}
?>

Now the log in the terminal (that’s ALWAYS open) will display something like

[22-Mar-2010 06:54:05] it would be weird to NOT get this message

This function also provides several other options such as being able to send the message via e-mail, or to a TCP port. So you can imagine the possibilities for customizing responses to different situations are endless. Here’s a list of useful resources that will help you in your logging quests.

• error_log – Manual
• Errors and Logging Configuration Options – Manual
• php.ini Guide: Error Handling and Logging – Added Bytes
• tail () – Unix man pages (if you have *nix system available just type ‘man tail’ )

This post only covers the very basics of logging PHP, but it’s intended as a starting point. I’m very interested in learning how you use logging or what debugging techniques you’ve developed. Don’t be shy and leave a comment.

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Work

Fortunately I’ve been extremely busy with three projects I’m working in parallel. The first one is a new site for a well known real estate agent in the Atlanta market. The site has a custom-made admin interface to allow her and her team to edit their own content and some other details, without drowning them in unnecessary features. We should be going live in early February so we are in the final stages which can be extremely hectic. We already have some very cool features (hint) to follow the launch which I’ll probably write about later.

The second project is a web application that makes use of the Amazon Mechanical Turk API which took me a bit of time to learn. Unlike some of the APIs I’ve written about, this one is more complex. I’m planning on extending this project into a full PHP library for the Mechanical Turk API once it’s finished. I will very likely release it as an open source project from the beginning.

The third project is longer term and it’s based on a WorpPress MU, although with the upcoming merge it’ll just be WordPress. It has to do with a national religious-based organization and will probably spawn many blog posts along the way as well. I’m really excited about this project as it’ll allow me to dig very deep into WordPress.

Projects

As any developer, designer or webbie out there I have a list of personal projects I’d like to tackle at one point.

Blog re-design: I don’t consider my blog to be ugly, but it certainly isn’t beautiful either (and it has some details that need fixing badly), and the best word to describe it is probably “simple”. I’ve been working on some ideas here and there and hopefully will get to release a new theme soon. Here’s a preview of the latest iteration (please give me your $0.02).

Collaborate with WordPress: During Wordcamp Atlanta many of the speakers tried to motivate the audience to help WordPress grow. What a good job they did! I came out of the event energized to start lending a hand. So expect me to start picking up some tickets, writing plugins, etc. very soon.

Start an open source project: I’ve been wanting to start one for a very long time, and I think it will be a small PHP library for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk API.

Learn Objective-C: I’ve been meaning to learn a new language for a long time. Writing iPhone and/or Mac applications sounds very appealing and that’s the direction I want to take. Of course, this will take a big commitment on my part so I’ll have to wait until I have a bit more time to tackle this one.

Tools

When I say tools I don’t just mean my editor and ssh client -although these are fundamental- but actually all the things that help me as a web developer. Here’s a list that might have some tidbits you can use as well.

Software tools: I write in Coda, keep track of my code in GitHub, use a Linux VPS to host my projects (and this blog), use FileZilla to transfer files, and FireBug and FirePHP to debug.

Stay-on-top tools: It’s hard to stay on top of everything in the web development world, but there are some key blogs and podcasts that help reduce the noise to signal ratio. My favorite podcast is BoagWorld which is also a very neat blog. Here’s my entire podcast playlist if you want to look for yourself. I usually listen to them in the car which would otherwise default to NPR, talk radio or some lame FM station.

If you can spare a couple of hours every week, do yourself a favor and sign on to DCTH (Design Community Twitter Hours). You will learn, network, have fun and spend time in great company with awesome webbies from all over.

Not all my activities take place in front of a computer.  I’ve joined several groups of interest through Meetup.com which have helped me learn, make friends and even find new clients. Also, working from home was taking a toll in my social interaction level, so I joined Ignition Alley, a great co-working space in midtown Atlanta.

So as you can see I have more than a plate-full going forward. What do you have going on? Please share your own experiences, tips, projects and whatnot.

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This quick intro is intended to give you a taste of how it works, the different sections, and give you enough of a kickstart to allow you to discover on your own. We’ll walk through the interface, and try out a few practical examples to give you a taste of the bug. Best of all, you can do all of it while reading this post.

First of all you need to install it.

Open it with F12, or click on the little bug at the bottom right corner of the browser.

Select HTML from the top bar and hover over the different elements. Notice how they are highlighted as you move from one to the next.

Select the CSS (right next to HTML), you can double-click any entry to modify it, or right-click and select ‘edit’. For example, look for the a selector and change text-decoration :   none to underline and see all the links suddenly change. Also, note that it auto-completes the property (fancy).

Firebug DOM menu

The DOM section is very useful, but also complicated to navigate if you don’t know what you are looking for. We’ll look at more of the DOM later on.

The Net section is simply cool. It might be disabled when you first click on it, but it’ll give you the option to enable if that’s the case. The initial subsection is All which shows a graphical representation of the aggregate of time it took to download each element on the page. You can also view the other sub-sections for CSS, Javascript, etc. Click on ‘clear’ at the top left of the Firebug pane, then refresh the page and see the section populate in real time.

Let’s give a second look at the HTML section. Look at the HTML tree and open up to the entry <div class=”container”> (html -> body -> div).  On the right pane you can see the CSS styles affecting the page, under Laytout there’s an on-the-fly box model (awesome for troubleshooting margins, padding, etc.) In the DOM section you can check out the DOM properties for each particular element.

For exmaple, on the left side select the  <title>tag (html -> head -> title). In the right panel look for the text entry and double-click on it. Change the title to the one of your choice and see the page renamed.

Saving the best for last, try the following. Click on Console, at the very bottom you should have a prompt that looks like >>>. Right there type “alert(“Hello NicDev”);” without the quotes, and press enter. Your script has just been run, you can imagine how handy this is to try JS on the fly.

Well, there’s a whole lot more to Firebug than what we went over today, but hopefully you feel comfortable enough to go tackle some of those tutorials and start churning out some awesome sites.

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