Zero-configuration debugging

Last modified: 13 March 2025

In case of zero-configuration debugging, you do not need to create any debug configuration. Instead, you open the starting page of your PHP application in the browser manually, and then activate the debugging engine from the browser, while PhpStorm listens to incoming debugger connections.

Initiate a debugging session

PhpStorm supports debugging with two most popular tools: Xdebug and Zend Debugger. These tools cannot be used simultaneously because they block each other. To avoid this problem, you need to update the php.ini file of the relevant PHP interpreter as described in Configure Xdebug and Configure Zend Debugger.

To initiate a zero-configuration debugging session, perform these general steps.

Enable listening to incoming debugging connections

  • Toggle the Start Listen PHP Debug Connections button start listening php debug connections on the PhpStorm toolbar or status bar so that it changes to stop listening php debug connections. After that PhpStorm starts listening to the port of the debugging engine used in the current project. Debugging ports are set at the PhpStorm level on the PHP | Debug page of the Settings dialog () . Start listening to debugging connections

Set breakpoints in your code

Set a breakpoint in your code by doing any of the following:

  • Click the left gutter area at a line where you want to toggle a breakpoint.

  • From the main menu, choose Run | Toggle Line Breakpoint.

  • Press .

Set breakpoints

Alternatively, select Run | Break at first line in PHP scripts to have the debugger stop as soon as connection with PhpStorm is established (instead of running automatically until the first breakpoint is reached).

Activate debugger on server

To activate the debugger engine on the server, do either of the following:

  • Set a special GET/POST or COOKIE parameter manually (for more information, refer to the Xdebug official documentation).

  • Use a browser extension, which lets you enable the debugger with a single click. For example, for Chrome, you can use the Xdebug Helper by JetBrains extension:

    Xdebug helper in Chrome

Start the debugging session

  1. Reload the page in the browser and return to PhpStorm. In the Incoming Connection From <Debugging Engine> dialog, select the path mappings so that PhpStorm can map the remote files on the web server to the local files in your project. If you have a deployment configuration defined, PhpStorm will offer configuring the mappings based on the paths you've already set in that configuration.

    Incoming debugger connection Xdebug

    Note that, at this step, you can also disable listening for debug connections at a project level. This is useful when you have several projects open and listening to incoming connections.

  2. After reaching the breakpoint, the debugger is suspended. You can now investigate the application in PhpStorm's Debug tool window.

    Application stopped at breakpoint

  3. Continue running the program and examine its frames as soon as it is suspended again.

    • To control the program execution manually, step through the code using the commands under the Run menu or toolbar buttons: Step Into , Step Out , Step Over , and others. For more information, refer to Step through the program.

    • To have the program run automatically up to the next breakpoint, resume the session by choosing Run | Debugging Actions | Resume Program or pressing .

Specify the scripts to skip requests to

You can also specify the scripts requests to which you want PhpStorm to ignore during debugging. This approach can be useful, when your application contains scripts that use AJAX. Suppose you have a menu-ajax-script.php that "reloads" a part of your web page. This script works properly, so you do not need to debug it. However, this script is still requested during the debugging session. To have incoming connections to this script ignored, add the menu-ajax-script.php script to the skipped paths list.

note

If a script is added to Skipped paths, it is only skipped when starting a debugging session for it. To ignore a script when stepping through the program during a debugging session, configure a stepping filter.

See also

Procedures

Reference

Web Resources