Hopper

What even is this?

The Debug Bar plugin has been an invaluable tool for working with WordPress code, however it's far from perfect. While it incorporates a heap of useful data, there's a lot more that it misses. It also doesn't provide many useful APIs for development.

Hopper is an effort to improve this. Based on Symfony's Web Profiler, the idea is to use WordPress' internals against itself and provide the best dang profiler and debugger around.

How do I use this?

Installing

Download the plugin from this repository, then install the dependencies with composer install.

Usage

After activation, load any page. You should see the Symfony toolbar appear on the page.

Using Hopper's features

Logging

Hopper offers a PSR-3 compatible logger interface that stores messages with the request data, and displays them in the Hopper interface.

To get the current global logger:

$logger = apply_filters( 'hopper_logger', null );

If Hopper is disabled, your code will continue to function correctly as long as you check for null values. Using a filter for this ensures that your code does not depend on Hopper, which is important for production environments.

What's with the name?

Hopper is named for the legendary Grace Hopper who was a pioneer in the field of computing, inventing the first compiler and first machine-independent programming language (COBOL). She's also credited with popularising the term "debugging", based on her experience with fixing a computer problem by removing a moth from the system.

A hopper is also a container used to collect and disperse material, which is a fitting name for a plugin that collects data and compiles it for developers.

License

Includes icons from the Symfony project. Icons created by Sensio (http://www.sensio.com/) are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

rmccue/Hopper