J—P

As a developer who frequently relies on PHP's built-in web server for local development, I've always found myself in need of a debugging tool that is light, fast, and unobtrusive. While there are many powerful debugging tools available, I wanted something that wouldn't interfere with my workflow and would provide clear, readable output with minimal setup.

This led me to create lemmon/cl, a simple PHP console logger designed to make debugging a breeze.

The core of the library is a single function, cl(), which can be used to dump any variable to your server console. It's incredibly easy to use. Just pass a variable to the function, and it will be beautifully formatted in your terminal, courtesy of the powerful symfony/var-dumper component.

Here’s a quick look at how it works:

// Demonstrate cl() with some example data
$exampleData = [
    'string' => 'Hello World',
    'number' => 42,
    'array' => ['apple', 'banana', 'orange'],
    'object' => (object)['name' => 'John', 'age' => 30],
];

cl($exampleData);

This will produce a color-coded, easy-to-read output in your console, allowing you to inspect variables without cluttering your web page.

For me, lemmon/cl has become an indispensable part of my development process. It’s a tool born out of a personal need, and I’m excited to share it with the open-source community.

If you’re looking for a lightweight and elegant debugging solution for your PHP projects, I encourage you to give lemmon/cl a try. You can find it on GitHub and Packagist.