PHPstorm - Unable to set breakpoints in blade.php

Question

I'm working on a Laravel application and can debug my controller php files fine, but Id like to also debug the blade.php files. With my current setup Ive followed all of jetbrains recommend settings for Laravel, (https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/PhpStorm/Laravel+Development+using+PhpStorm#LaravelDevelopmentusingPhpStorm-DebuggingLaravelApplicationswithPhpStorm) but it is still not allowing my to set breakpoints in the blade.php files.

What could I be missing?

Answer 1

Even if you can get the IDE to enable breakpoints on the blade files, it won't work - Laravel composes a PHP file from the Blade file - it is this file that is eventually used when the script is run - not the Blade file.

A Work-Around

This works for PHPStorm - but something similar might be possible in other IDEs.

Laravel (5) stores the composed files under storage/framework/views. These files have random generated file names - so it may be tricky to find the file you want. An easy way is to delete all these temp files and then refresh the page you want to debug. A new file will be created. In PHPstorm you can right-click on the file and select the file's extension type. (Not sure about other IDEs)

You will now be able to set breakpoints. Obviously you will need to make the changes in the Blade file - but this will at least help you to figure out what is wrong.

**Update: Alex's solution is easier! **

Answer 2

As with the recent PHPstorm and Laravel 5.8 this should work now out of the box.

https://laravel-news.com/laravel-5-8-blade-template-file-path

Answer 3

Putting a

<?php xdebug_break(); ?>

into your blade file works pretty well. Even in my tests, PHPstorm jumps to the next PHP statement in some cases.

Why this works:

Laravel processes the blade file to a normal PHP file in the cache folder. But the PHP statement xdebug_break(); will be transferred there and cause the program to halt at the position you want it to (in the cache file).

Answer 4

I devised an even better hack, which allows conditional debugging support, so that you aren't stuck with XDebug_break for the rest of eternity.

The single line expands as follows.

<?php if ( \app\utils\DebugLogger::EnableForBlades ( ) ) xdebug_break ( ) ; ?>

This statement has a couple of unusual features.

1. Since blade files done't have use directives, the method name, \app\utils\DebugLogger::EnableForBlades is fully qualified.
2. Since blade files seem to lack support for the usual code blocking mechanism, the one-line statement is devoid of braces, and is terminated by a semicolon.

EnableForBlades is a static method that queries an environment variable (one of those defined in .local.env), returning True if that variable evaluates to True. Otherwise, it returns False, and xdebug_break is suppressed.

Answer 5

To close this question - phpstorm doesnt support this functionality at the moment. A work around provided by jetbrains support was to add *.blade.php to file type associations under PHP in the IDE settings, however, it still wasnt working for me after doing this.

It appears that they created a youtrack ticket in response to my request, if youd like to encourage jetbrains to work on this please upvote: youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-26476