When I am trying to optimize my PHP code, one of my prefered tools is xdebug. It provides me with excellent error messages, outputs code tracing files & insight into memory usage.

By using kcachegrind or webgrind – wincachegrind crashes *all* the time – to parse the cachegrind files created by xdebug, you get a good idea of what your code is doing most of the time. It’ll show you which functions are called, by who, which arguments are passed and tons more. Check it out.

Now, there was one small thing I couldn’t find anywhere. A program to parse the trace files that xdebug generates. True, xdebug already provides the option to output this information into HTML, but it’s not really what I was looking for. I want to get quick information in the blink of an eye! That’s why I have created my own trace file parser, based on PHP of course.

What is it?

This xdebug trace parser will show you, for each function:

• How much memory was used on entry & exit
• How much time it costed to execute the function
• The exact line the function was called from plus insight into the code by clicking a link
• Whether the function is native PHP or not

It also has a basic “alerting” feature, which will allow you to set triggers on memory usage & execution time. You can specifiy that if the memory or time jump is greater than a certain value, to show this in the output.

Requirements

It should be obvious that you’ll need to install and configure xdebug for your PHP installation. See http://www.xdebug.org for more information on this.

Your xdebug config should look a bit like this, don’t forget to update your paths

[XDebug]
;; Only Zend OR (!) XDebug
zend_extension_ts="\php\ext\php_xdebug-2.0.4-5.2.8.dll"
xdebug.auto_trace=1
xdebug.trace_format=1
xdebug.profiler_append=1
xdebug.profiler_enable=1
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger=0
xdebug.collect_params=4
xdebug.collect_return=1
xdebug.trace_output_dir="D:\webserver\xdebug"
xdebug.trace_output_name= %t.trace
xdebug.profiler_output_name = %s.%t.profile
xdebug.profiler_output_dir="D:\webserver\xdebug"

Download

Now, give it a try and downlod the xdebug trace file parser here!

Usage

Once you’ve downloaded the trace file parser, extract it to a directory inside your website root and surf to the URL. If everything works out you should be able to select trace files onceyou have ran an other PHP script on your server. This trace file parser will *not* show it’s own traces because that would make things even more complicated!

Comments & suggestions!

Because those snazzy Samsung phones don’t like windows explorer to see their files, you go ahead and install the device driver software. All and all installation goes well besides for some error messages complaining about 64bit… You’re thinking “Hmm… I thought the website and box said 64bit compatible.” So those messages go into your ignore box… (This is where you go wrong)

Opening up the program you get one of those lounge beats that you might of heard when you’re installing Windows. They even added shiny buttons and a little flash application to show you how well it’s going to work! Unfortunately this application seems to crash once you click on the first button but still manages to launch the Samsung New PC studio! Woooo! Time to add so…me… fi…l…es? Errr…

So… you press the shiny “connect” button and see that your Samsung Phone is properly connected. Goodies. You select your phone, click on connect and… wait… wait… wait a little bit longer… you get a coffee… Once you get back with your coffee, ready to enjoy the promises made in the flash movie that just crashed. Oh noes. “no response from the device.“. Your reboot your computer, your phone… nothing seems to work (yes, I have tried yelling at it).

Next on the list… Googling the issue… “no response from the device because it is in the initializing stage after booting. try again after the initialization has completed.” 3 very unhelpful results. Crap. Crap. CRAAAHAAAAP. Anyway, while performing this Google search for the issue I did find out that this New PC studio is *not* compatible with 64bit systems. Teehee. The webpage that provided this information also provides a hint about an older version of the pc studio. So I close my eyes, wish for the best  and download samsung pc studio 3.

Ofcourse, before installing pc studio 3 it would be wise to uninstall new pc studio. Right? Right! Going to the control panel I got a pleasent surprise. Tehee. No less than 9 different drivers and/or utilities have been installed by the new pc studio installer. What the f¨ck. Some seem to be copies of one another? And Duh. You have to uninstall each program on it’s own.

In the end… pc studio 3 still doesn’t make it work. In fact, it just got worse. USB drivers failed to work and the program itself kept crashing.

Anyway, if any of you out there happen to have a solution for this issue, it’s would be more than welcome because a lot of people are having this problem.