If you’re using namespaces when working on your WordPress plugins (or whatever project you have going on), then you’re likely also taking advantage of a PHP autoloader.

Though this post isn’t really meant to be a tutorial on how to use them (I have another one of those coming up later), here’s the gist of what an autoloader is (or does):

One of the biggest annoyances is having to write a long list of needed includes at the beginning of each script (one for each class) … By registering autoloaders, PHP is given a last chance to load the class or interface before it fails with an error.

It’s a feature that, if your environment supports it, should be used. But I digress.

The point of this post is how to combat the potential problem you may encounter when using a PHP autoloader in your code and alongside other plugins.

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Debugging WordPress projects is one of those things that WordPress developers seem to approach differently.

Though there are certainly different ways to do it, I’m of the mind that using a debugger is the most effective way to, ahem, debug a project. I’m not saying that to try to be a purist, but the benefits of using an actual debugger far outweigh the alternatives.

But in WordPress, it seems that using facilities built into PHP are far more prevalent than using software specifically designed for debugging.

Sometimes, I think this comes with the nature of looking at other peoples code, and sometimes I think comes from not knowing where else to start.

But if there’s one thing that can not only help you become better at debugging projects and understanding source code, nothing can top debugging WordPress projects with an actual debugger.

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