Open browser on listen for XDebug

Jamie

I have a question about the PHP Tools plugin for VSCode. I've been using PHP Tools in VS2015/17/19 for many years but VSCode is a bit new to me.

So, the basic launch.json profiles allows me to start the built-in PHP server or listen for Xdebug, etc, which is cool. When I launch the built-in server it opens my web browser to the correct URL.

My question is, is there a way to get it to open the browser to a URL when I use the "listen for xdebug" profile? I'd like to press F5 to start the debugger and popup the browser immediate. Is this possible?

JakubMisek

There is a built-in feature in VSCode (added recently) allowing you to open browser upon debug.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/debugging#_automatically-open-a-uri-when-debugging-a-server-program

The entire Listen for Xdebug configuration in your launch.json would look like following:

{
    "name": "Listen for Xdebug",
    "type": "php",
    "request": "launch",
    "port": 9000,
    "serverReadyAction":{
        "action": "openExternally",
        "pattern": "Xdebug on port ([0-9]+)",
        "uriFormat": "http://localhost:8888/?xdebug=%s"
    }
}

http://localhost:8888 is your URL
?xdebug=%s is a little trick, because VSCode forces you to use the Xdebug port number 9000 somewhere in the URL

Note: this works for PHP Tools for VS Code released on August 1st 2019 and newer.

Jamie

JakubMisek Brilliant. Thank you! With a couple of tweaks this ended up working exactly as I needed.

I looked at the serverReadyAction documentation before I posted and it's either not documented yet, or I was a couple of days early.

JakubMisek

thank you @Jamie ! we'll add this into the documentation

JakubMisek

@Jamie may I ask what tricks you needed? Is there something we can do better?
thank you :)