DevShed has posted the next part in their series looking at using the XDebug extension. This time they focus on the var_dump function and the enhancements the extension brings to the table.

As you may know, "var_dump()" is a PHP native function, but the X-debug library provides an enhanced version of it that's capable of retrieving much more information about a supplied variable. These capabilities greatly extend its usefulness in debugging.

This enhanced version of var_dump displays not only the usual variable information (types, value, etc) but also allows for more advanced output like the object definition, including properties, in their example.