Add debugging tools to admin bar

[schlessera]

Feature description

As debugging is a big part of working with the AMP plugin, I think we need to ensure we provide as many tools as possible to make this as easy as it can be.

Right now, debugging anything that happens during the shutdown handler can only be properly inspected through XDebug or logging. The most straight-forward way that most developers use to get quick info (dumping) is not accessible at that point.

I'd like to add a debugging toolset to the AMP admin bar integration (maybe hidden behind a AMP_DEBUG switch?) that shows meaningful diagnostic data, and most of all, provides a container to dump data into.

A developer should be able to do something like AMP_Debug::dump( $some_variable ); and it would populate a submenu in the admin bar with entries.

Each dump would show how many times it was triggered, and what the individual values were.

Cheap example menu structure diagram thingy:

AMP (top-level menu entry)
   Re-validate
   View non-AMP version
   ---
   CSS Size
      [...]
   Dumps
      $some-variable [6]
         (bool) true
         (bool) true
         (bool) true
         (bool) true
         (bool) true
         (bool) false

This would come in extremely handy for getting a quick overview of what a certain piece of code does, and could even be used on production sites (😬).

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Acceptance criteria

Implementation brief

QA testing instructions

Demo

Changelog entry

[schlessera]

The idea for this came from the Tracy Debugger, which provides a bdump() for dumping into the debugger bar:
https://tracy.nette.org/en/guide#toc-variable-dumping

[swissspidy]

I've always been dreaming about a Query Monitor integration... If the solution here is implementation agnostic, that would be huge.

[schlessera]

The main work is collecting the data. Whether you then output it as a list in the admin bar or a list in QM is just a matter of picking the right classes...?

[swissspidy]

That's what I wanted to hear, thanks :-)

[westonruter]

CSS Size

See also #2169 and #1801. It would be cool to show a <meter> element indicating how close the user is to the 75KB limit before going to the Validated URL screen, and (currently) looking at the source code of the page for the CSS manifest HTML comment.

A developer should be able to do something like AMP_Debug::dump( $some_variable ); and it would populate a submenu in the admin bar with entries.

I often dump out variables with this:

error_log( json_encode( $x, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT | JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES ) );

I then tail the error log. Would this be any different other than avoiding the need to have access to the error log?

[amedina]

@schlessera Have you continued exploring this?

[jwold]

Is there any UX work that I can support on this, or is it already pretty much thought out?

[westonruter]

I think we need to first nail down what information specifically we want to surface from a technical perspective, and then we can explore UX.

[amedina]

I agree. Let's think about the feature in the context of the "workflows" we are discussing as part of the upcoming roadmap. No implementation should be started on this before we nail down the feature requirements.

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On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 12:20 PM Weston Ruter ***@***.***> wrote: I think we need to first nail down what information specifically we want to surface from a technical perspective, and then we can explore UX. — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3588 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAD3R2IVQJXJXWKFONUS46TR7GWJFANCNFSM4JDNQMNA> .