This presentation was delivered in the technical track of the break out sessions at Magento's Imagine eCommerce Conference, held on February 7-9, 2011 in Los Angeles.

2. OVERVIEW
• Environment configuration
• Common Magento development problems and how to approach them
• Using the right tools for the job: PHP debugging and profiling with Magento/
Eclipse
I won’t be covering everything in minute detail. At the end of the presentation, I’ll
provide a link to slideshow and link to blog posts explaining different sections in more
detail.

4. AUTO-SET DEVELOPER MODE
• Enable Mage::isDeveloperMode() on development and staging environments
• Preferably, set the MAGE_IS_DEVELOPER_MODE via .htaccess file or server
configuration. Example:
• Alternatively, set the developer mode using conditional code in index.php.
Example:

5. SHOW ALL ERRORS IN DEVELOPER MODE
• Ensure that all errors are displayed when in developer mode:

6. WHY DETAILED ERROR AND EXCEPTION BACKTRACES ROCK
• You can see all arguments passed to functions in the call stack
• You can see all local variables at the location of the error/exception
• You can customize xdebug to create links that allow you to jump to a specific line/
file in your favorite editor
HOW DO I GET SUCH DETAIL?
• Install Xdebug (an Apache module) on your development/staging servers
• My recommended xdebug configuration values: http://bit.ly/gspkIK

7. Before

8. After
Links to the
location the file
Fully expanded
argument
variables
Local variables

9. HACK MAGENTO (SAFELY) TO ENABLE
BACKTRACES
• Modify the Mage::run() method to not catch exceptions if developer mode is on
(blog post explaining how to make this modification: http://bit.ly/feJE2y)

10. USING MAGE::LOG TO LOG DEBUG DATA
• Mage::log() allows you to log code to either the default var/logs/system.log file, or
a custom file.
• Mage::log(‘This is a custom message’, Zend_Log::INFO, ‘customfile.log’, true)
• Pass Varien_Debug::backtrace(true, false) to Mage::log() to log a backtrace. This
is helpful if you want to know what code is calling a specific section of code. This
can be helpful when testing methods that are difficult to use a debugger on, such
as Paypal code.
• Log the attributes of a model using Mage::log($model->debug()) The debug()
method prevents Mage::log from logging the dump of all of the nested objects
• You can monitor the contents of the log files using:
• Command-line: tail –f <file_name>
• Mac: Console.app (Must have developer tools installed)
• Windows: Baretail (http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/ )

11. CONFIGURE EXCEPTION HANDLER TO EMAIL
REPORTS
• When a user of a live site encounters an error, Magento shows them a form
(NOTE: on what conditions will Magento show a form vs a generic exception page)
allowing them to submit the details that happened that caused that error. That
exception will also be logged to var/log/exceptions.log
• If you want to be notified about all exceptions via email, copy errors/
local.xml.template to errors/local.xml and configure it to send reports via email
and enter your email.

13. GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SQLSTATE ERRORS
• What do you do when Magento throws a generic SQLSTATE database error?
• An “Integrity contraint violation”, or some other SQLSTATE error, doesn’t tell you
much, unless you can view the error and the backtrace
• Especially relevant for errors encountered in the admin panel
• We have to hack two files (these hacks are harmless)…

14. GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SQLSTATE ERRORS
Modify Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Abstract to get backtraces for single queries

15. GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SQLSTATE ERRORS
Modify Zend_Db_Statement_Pdo to get backtraces for transactional query errors

16. THINGS TO CHECK WHEN A CUSTOM MODULE DOESN’T LOAD
Problem: You’ve created a basic skeleton of a module with a module xml file,
config.xml file, layout file, and block, but the module isn’t showing. Here are some
quick steps you can take to debug the issue:
1. Ensure that the module’s xml file in app/etc/modules/ is being loaded. Tip: Add
an error to the module’s config file and then reload the page. If the page throws
an error, the file is being loaded.
2. Ensure that the module’s config.xml file is being loaded using same technique
above
3. Ensure that the layout file is getting loaded using same technique above
4. Ensure that caching is disabled and remove the cache directory (var/cache)
manually if it isn’t
5. If you’re not working on a case-sensitive partition, ensure the cases of your class
names and xml references are correct.

17. DEBUGGING BY PROCESS OF ELIMINATION
Problem: You are working on a site with 5 third-party modules and 4 custom
modules. You’ve heavily modified the way that products work in the system. You run
into an error where products aren’t saving from the admin.
• You can either:
• Start digging into the code to determine the cause of the issue, OR:
• Isolate the cause of the issue by progressively disabling the modules on the
site until you identify which module is causing the error. Most of the time, this
is the better approach.
• After you identify the violating module, start commenting out different sections of
the config.xml file until the issue goes away.
• After you identify the bad class/file, go through the code, progressively
eliminating different sections until you narrow it down to a line of code

18. ESOTERIC ERROR MESSAGE
Problem: Your client tries to place an order in the admin. When doing so, they get a
generic error message about the product stock quantity not being able to be
saved (NOTE: replace with real example, preferably one that can be recreated
easily). You check the error and exception logs, but you have nothing to work
with. What do you do?
• Take the error message and search the Magento codebase for the error.
• Once you locate the error, set a breakpoint and debug the error from there.

19. DISABLING A MODULE VS DISABLING BLOCK OUTPUT
• Disabling block output explained
• You can access this option in System > Configuration > Advanced
• Disabling a module’s block output makes the XXXX class not output the
contents of any blocks in that module
• Why would you disable a modules block output as opposed to disabling it?
• NOTE: Fill in details
• Core Magento classes that are commonly disabled
• Mage_Poll, Mage_Review, Mage_Tag, Mage_Wishlist (NOTE: Need to verify that
there are no issues disabling these module‘s block output)
• Disabling a module
• Change the <active>true</active> to false
• Remove the module’s config file from app/etc/modules

21. QUICK TIPS: DEBUGGING SHIPPING METHOD RATES
• Problem: Your shipping rates are configured like they should be, but when you
add certain items to your cart, the shipping section is showing an error message
like “No shipping rates found”. Magento provides no easy way to see what errors
the carriers are returning, and so these errors can be hard to debug.
• Modify the classes in app/code/core/Mage/Usa/Model/Shipping/Carrier/
<carrier_name>.php to log XML returned from carrier
• UPS: Filename, line number
• Fedex: Filename, line number
• USPS: Filename, line number
• Once you have the full XML response data from the carrier, you can determine the
cause of the error.
• Common causes:
• The products in the cart have 0 weight
• NOTE: Add additional items…

22. DON’T BE AFRAID TO HACK - TEMPORARILY
• Find the source of the problem
• Set a debug point, or add a Mage::log() function to log the important data

24. OVERVIEW OF ECLIPSE DEBUGGING
• Breakpoints / conditional breakpoints
• Stepping through code
• Inspecting variables in local scope (especially relevant are the _data and _items
arrays on models and collections)
• Jumping back through the Call Stack to view variables in scope at that point in the
stack
• Watch expressions
• Tip: Run code in current context using “Inspect”

25. BREAKPOINTS
• Purposes
• Identify that Magento is hitting a certain section of code (can also use
Mage::log(__METHOD__ . ‘ ‘ . __LINE); for that)
• Determine what a certain section of code does
• Conditional breakpoints
SWITCH TO ECLIPSE FOR WALKTHROUGH

26. INSPECTING VARIABLES
• Inspecting variables in local scope
• Many classes in Magento have recursive properties, so if you expand all
properties, you’ll get an infinite nesting
• The _data array stores all of the data present in a model
• The _items array contains all of the items loaded in a collection
SWITCH TO ECLIPSE FOR WALKTHROUGH

27. CALL STACK
• Shows all code that has been run up to that point
• Clicking to previous lines in the call stack changes the variables in the local scope
SWITCH TO ECLIPSE FOR WALKTHROUGH

28. WATCH EXPRESSIONS
• See what a certain expression would return if it was being run in the code at that
point. Example: $product->getStatus();
• Run code in current context using “Inspect”
• Use Ctl+Shift+I to run code in local scope
SWITCH TO ECLIPSE FOR WALKTHROUGH

29. QUESTIONS?

30. ZEND STUDIO-ONLY FEATURES
• Comparison between PDT and Zend Studio
• For debugging, the biggest advantages of Zend Studio are:
• Profiling
• Tight Zend Server integration (helpful if Magento site is running on Zend
Server in production)
SWITCH TO Zend Studio FOR WALKTHROUGH