Cookbook: Inspecting a variable's value

MIK provides a utility function that dumps the contents of a variable. This function will be of use to developers and to general MIK users who need extra information to troubleshoot problems. The function's signature is:

/**
 * Utility function to dump a variable to a log.
 *
 * @param $variable mixed
 *   The variable to dump.
 * @param $label string
 *   A label to dump along with the value. Defaults to ''.
 * @param $dest string
 *   The full path to a log file. Defaults to the system's
 *   temp directory with a filename of 'mik_dumper.txt'.
 */
function dump($variable, $label = null, $dest = null) {}

The default directory of the destination output file is determined by PHP's sys_get_temp_dir function, usually "/tmp" on Linux and OSX systems and "C:\Windows\Temp" on Windows systems.

To use this utility function, instantiate a new Dumper object and then call its dump method:

$dumper = new \mik\utilities\Dumper();
$dumper->dump($record, 'Record', '/tmp/foo.txt');

In this example, the value of the variable $record is dumped to the file /tmp/foo.txt, prepended with the label Record. The output file will contain the value of each instance of the $record variable:

Record:
stdClass::__set_state(array(
   'Identifier' => 'image01',
   'File' => 'IMG_1410.JPG',
   'Title' => 'Small boats in Havana Harbour',
   'Date taken' => '2015-03-08',
   'Subjects' => 'Boats; water',
   'Note' => 'Taken on vacation in Cuba.',
   'key' => 'image01',
))

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