First, you have to rule out if the issue lies with JavaScript. You’ll know how painful this can be if you’ve ever had to debug a WordPress asynchronous request handled by either admin-ajax.php or the WP REST API. One of the biggest advantages of setting this up alongside the PHP debugger is that it’s possible to debug both JavaScript and PHP during the same session! PhpStorm also ships with a JavaScript debugger, which is just as straightforward to set up and use. It reminds me of my Delphi/Visual Basic days when the development IDE had a built-in step debugger you could turn on by setting a few breakpoints and running the application code. PhpStorm supports advanced Xdebug features like remote debugging, but one of my favorite features is the zero-configuration debugging setup. Why Use the PhpStorm Debugger?īuilt by JetBrains, PhpStorm is in my opinion - and the opinion of many of my colleagues - the best IDE for PHP development. How is this magic even possible? In this article, I’ll show you how it works, how to use it to debug JavaScript and PHP code at the same time, and how you can debug modern JavaScript frameworks like React or Vue. PHP is a backend language, and JavaScript is (for me) a frontend language. What I didn’t know until very recently was that it’s also possible to debug JavaScript using the same setup, which blew my mind! Ever since I discovered how to configure PhpStorm with Xdebug for debugging, it’s been my go-to solution for hunting down difficult to reproduce bugs.

Phpstorm for javascript