Tag: Debugging WordPress with Ray

TL;DR: Here’s another way to start debugging WordPress with Ray using Composer on a project-specific basis.

Last week, I wrote a brief introduction on Ray, what I like about it, and why I enjoy using it with WordPress. I also gave a brief tutorial on how to use it in your day-to-day but that was it.

Ultimately, I want to cover more about the application from a development and debugging standpoint (as I had some great feedback about it on Twitter – thanks for that!). Before doing so, though, I thought it would be more useful to start with one more tip on how to get started using it.

Namely, how to use Ray with WordPress in a Composer-based workflow.

TL;DR: This post gives a high-level overview of what kind of app Ray is and how to set it up for use in WordPress.

For as long as I’ve been involved with WordPress development, I’ve consistently seen developers – myself included – consistently use print_r and var_dump whenever they need to see what’s going on within their code.

And this is okay for smaller data structures like looks at objects, arrays, and so on. Then on the other end of the debugging spectrum, if you need to step through code to see what arguments are being passed into a given function from where and with what value, then using something like Xdebug is incredibly helpful.

Until recently, I didn’t think there was middle ground. But then I found Ray and I’ve been using it ever since.