Zesk Debugging

When writing and maintaining code it's important to be able to flag sections of code where more information is needed to track down a specific issue. Ideally this would be a run-time flag which allows us to turn the debugging messages on or off depending on the server or application context. This document outlines a pattern used in Zesk and recommended in your own code for enabling flags

Functionality Flags

The general practice for setting debugging flags in your classes is to use a configuration option which is loaded into the global zesk\Application zesk\Configuration object.

Naming should be as follows:

This is a RECOMMENDATION and variations among classes may be permitted depending on your configuration needs.

Implementation via static debugging state:

use zesk\Application;
use zesk\Hooks;

class MailSender {
    public static $debug = false;

    public static function configured(Application $app) {
        self::$debug = toBool($app->configuration->path_get(array(__CLASS__, "debug")));
    }

    // Snip
}

Implementation on a per-object basis:

use zesk\Hookable;

class MailSender extends Hookable {
    //
    // Condensed for this example
    //

    /**
     * Initialize the MailSender
     */
    public function initialize(): void {
        parent::initialize();
        $this->inheritConfiguration();
    }

    /**
     * Log a message if debugging is enabled
     *
     * @option boolean debug 
     * @param string $message Message to send, e.g. "Something is {verb}"
     * @param array $args Message arguments, e.g. array("verb" => "awry")
     * @return void
     */
    public function debug($message, array $args = array()) {
        if ($this->optionBool("debug")) {
            $this->application->debug($message, $args);
        }
    }
    /**
     * Send the current message
     *
     * @option boolean debug 
     * @option boolean debug_send
     * @return self
     */
    public function send() {
        if ($this->optionBool("debug_send", $this->optionBool("debug"))) {
            $this->application->debug("Sending message {id}", array("id" => $this->id));
        }
    }
    // Snip
}

TODO: @option - implement something like this?