Greg Winiarski

<p>BlackBox is symfony like unobstrusive debug bar attached to the top of the browser window.</p>
<p>How can it help you with development:<br />
1. instantly inspect global variables (GET, POST, COOKIE, SERVER)<br />
2. debug both frontend and admin area<br />
3. executed MySQL queries and time it took to execute each query (useful for finding slow queries)<br />
4. profiler for measuring performance of your plugins and themes<br />
5. errors occurred when loading WordPress page</p>


BlackBox Debug Bar

Immediate feedback on a great majority of errors. Added a conditional red background to the Errors, and with this modification I have never miss even a notice anymore.

Thank you very much!

Essential plugin in my developer toolset

BlackBox is a plugin for plugin and theme developers. It collects and displays useful debug information (errors, executed queries, globals, profiler).

Automattic

Thorsten Ott

<p>This plugins adds more features to the debug-bar and is mainly aimed at developers who like to debug their code or want to measure runtimes to find glitches in their code.<br />
It also allows lookup of variables by adding simple code snippets in your source.</p>
<p>Please note that this plugin should be used solely for debugging or on a development environment and is not intended for use in a production site.</p>
<h3>Requirements</h3>
<p>This plugin requires <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-bar" rel="ugc">the debug-bar plugin >0.5</a> and a developers’ brain to work correctly.</p>
<h3>Usage</h3>
<h4>Usage example to debug the loop of a theme</h4>
<p>Add your checkpoints in the index.php or any other template file as shown below.</p>
<pre><code><?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

<?php Debug_Bar_Extender::instance()->checkpoint('loop start'); ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<?php Debug_Bar_Extender::instance()->trace_var( $post ); ?>

<?php Debug_Bar_Extender::instance()->checkpoint('loop1'); ?>

<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<?php //before_post(); ?>
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php printf(__('Permanent Link to %s', 'kubrick'), the_title_attribute('echo=0')); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<small><?php the_time(get_option('date_format')) ?> by <?php the_author() ?></small>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content(__('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;', 'kubrick')); ?>
</div>
<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags(__('Tags:', 'kubrick') . ' ', ', ', '<br />'); ?> <?php printf(__('Posted in %s', 'kubrick'), get_the_category_list(', ')); ?> | <?php edit_post_link(__('Edit', 'kubrick'), '', ' | '); ?> <?php comments_popup_link(__('No Comments »', 'kubrick'), __('1 Comment »', 'kubrick'), __('% Comments »', 'kubrick')); ?></p>
<?php after_post(); ?>
</div>

<?php Debug_Bar_Extender::instance()->checkpoint('loop2'); ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php Debug_Bar_Extender::instance()->checkpoint('loop end'); ?>

<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link(__('&laquo; Older Entries', 'kubrick')) ?></div>
<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link(__('Newer Entries &raquo;', 'kubrick')) ?></div>
</div>
<?php else : ?>
</code></pre>
<h3>Advanced usage</h3>
<p>Looking at the source of the debug-bar-extender.php you will notice that there are various filters to control the default settings. This is useful when you are working on a multisite install and want to use the debug bar without having to adjust the settings every time. Here’s an example of how settings enforced by a php file in mu-plugins/ could look like</p>
<pre><code>add_filter( 'debugbarextender_default_settings', 'my_debug_bar_extender_settings' );
// enforce debug bar settings
function my_debug_bar_extender_settings( $default_settings ) {
    $default_settings = array(
            'enable_profiler'               => 1,
            'enable_variable_lookup'        => 1,
            'track_default_vars'            => 0,
            'add_default_checkpoints'       => 1,
            'savequeries_debugmode_enable'  => 1,
            'use_error_log'                 => 0,
            'allow_url_settings'            => 1,
            'enable_admin_bar_menu'         => 1,
    );
    return $default_settings;
}

add_filter( 'debugbarextender_default_checkpoint_actions', 'my_debug_bar_extender_checkpoints' );
// initiate some default checkpoints
function my_debug_bar_extender_checkpoints( $default_checkpoints ) {
    $default_checkpoints = array(
                    'muplugins_loaded',
                    'wp_head',
                    'wp_footer',
                    'loop_start',
                    'loop_end',
                    'shutdown',
    );
    return $default_checkpoints;
}
</code></pre>
<h3>Wishlist</h3>
<p>This is a work in progress, so feel free to pass by on <a href="http://hitchhackerguide.com/wordpress-plugins/debug-bar-extender/" rel="nofollow ugc">our plugin page</a> and leave us<br />
your suggestions in the comments.</p>


Debug-Bar-Extender

Extends the debug-bar plugin with additional tabs to measure runtimes between checkpoints and lookup variable content.

BlackBox Debug Bar vs Debug-Bar-Extender