REF, or r() is a nicer alternative to PHP's print_r / var_dump functions.

DEMO

Requirements

• (server) PHP 5.3+ (5.4+ displays additional info)
• (client) Any browser, except IE 8 and lower of course

Usage

Basic usage:

// include the class
require '/full/path/to/ref.php';

// display info about defined classes
r(get_declared_classes());

// display info about global variables
r($GLOBALS);

To print in text mode you can use the rt() function instead:

rt($var);

To terminate the script after the info is dumped, prepend the bitwise NOT operator:

~r($var);   // html
~rt($var);  // text

Prepending the error control operator (@) will return the information:

$output = @r($var);   // html
$output = @rt($var);  // text

Keyboard shortcuts (javascript must be enabled):

• X - collapses / expands all levels

To modify the global configuration call ref::config():

// example: initially expand first 3 levels
ref::config('expandDepth', 3);

Currently available options and their default values:

Option name	Default value	Description
'expandDepth'	1	Initial expand depth (for HTML mode only). A negative value will expand all levels
'extendedInfo'	true	When this is set to true, additional information is returned. Note that this seriously affects performance for queries that involve large amounts of data (like arrays/iterators with many string elements)
'formatter'	array()	Callbacks for custom/external formatters (as associative array: format => callback)
'shortcutFunc'	array('r', 'rt')	Shortcut functions used to detect the input expression. If they are namespaced, the namespace must be present as well (methods are not supported)
'stylePath'	'{:dir}/ref.css'	Local path to a custom stylesheet (HTML only); false means that no CSS is included.
'scriptPath'	'{:dir}/ref.js'	Local path to a custom javascript (HTML only); false means no javascript (tooltips / toggle / kbd shortcuts require JS)