End-to-end: Setup PHP Debugging for Visual Studio Code on Windows
This is a quick tutorial of minimum installation and configurations of development environment for PHP programming, including Apache, PHP, and Visual Studio Code (VSCode) on 64 bit Windows.
Prerequisite
Check if Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable (x64) or higher version is installed for Windows.
If not, install it from Microsoft https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/:
Setup Apache
Go to Apache website: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/platform/windows.html#down, and download the Windows version, for example, httpd-2.4.25-win64-VC14.zip.
Extract the files to a folder, for example, D:\Software\Apache.
Then go to the Apache installation directory, under conf directory, open httpd.conf file, replace all “c:/Apache24” strings with relative path “..”.
Setup PHP
Go to PHP website: http://windows.php.net/download, download the Windows version, for example, VC14 x64 Thread Safe.
Extract the files to a folder, for example, D:\Software\Php.
Go to the PHP directory, copy the php.ini-development file, and paste as php.ini.
Open the file,
- Uncomment ; extension_dir = "ext", and replace with relative path extension_dir = "..\..\Php\ext"
- Enable the extensions, like curl, gd2, mbstring, sockets, etc., by comment the configurations, like extension=php_curl.dll, etc.
- Replace the temporary directory “..\tmp” with the correct path, for example “..\..\Temp\Php”
Go back to Apache’s conf/httpd.conf file,
- add LoadModule php7_module "../Php/php7apache2_4.dll",
- add AddType application/x-httpd-php .php,
- add PHPIniDir ../php
Setup XDebug
Go to XDebug website: https://xdebug.org/download.php, download the Windows version, for example, PHP 7.1 VC14 TS (64 bit) in this case.
Extract the single file to PHP extensions directory, for example, D:\Software\Php\ext\php_xdebug-2.5.4-7.1-vc14-x86_64.dll in this case.
Go to php.ini, add relative path of XDebug, for example, zend_extension = ..\..\Php\ext\php_xdebug-2.5.4-7.1-vc14-x86_64.dll.
Setup Visual Studio Code
Go to Visual Studio Code website: https://code.visualstudio.com, install Visual Studio Code.
Launch Visual Studio Code, install the PHP Debug extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=felixfbecker.php-debug.
Go to the settings, change the "php.validate.executablePath" item to PHP binary path, for example, "D:\\Software\\Php\\php.exe".
Setup Website
Go to Apache’s conf/httpd.conf,
- Set the port, for example, change Listen 80 to Listen 81.
- Uncomment server name, for example ServerName localhost:81
- Set document root to website directory, for example, change DocumentRoot "c:/Apache24/htdocs" to DocumentRoot "../../../Code/Website"
- Change <Directory "c:/Apache24/htdocs"> to the website directory too <Directory "../../../Code/Website">
- Inside <Directory />, change Require all denied to Require all granted
- Add index.php as directory index, by changing DirectoryIndex index.html to DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
In command line, run D:\Software\Apache\bin\httpd.exe.
Open the website directory with Visual Studio Code, create a file index.php with one line of code: <?php phpinfo(); ?>, add a break point. Press F5 to start debugging.
Open the website in browser: http://localhost:81, the index.php is executed, and the break point is triggered in Visual Studio Code.
