Alternatives to var_export

Question

var_export function causes an exception while argument has circular references. Are there any alternatives (except serialize) which handle it correctly?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 21 '10 at 12:57

3

You could try this :

ob_start();
var_dump($var);
$dump = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

And why can't you use serialize ?

answered Apr 21 '10 at 12:57

DuoSRX

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I need such converting for logs. And serialize output is too ugly for logs. – darja Apr 21 '10 at 13:16

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

2

Are you looking for var_dump or even debug_backtrace

Update:

Converting object to string

edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

Community

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answered Apr 21 '10 at 12:37

Sarfraz

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I want to convert object to string. var_dump outputs it, I don't need this – darja Apr 21 '10 at 12:40
@darja: The only other way i know of is serializing it (although you say except it). See my updated answer as well. – Sarfraz Apr 21 '10 at 12:46
Thanks for link. It sounds that I have two variants - serialize (which I don't want) and json_encode. – darja Apr 21 '10 at 13:50

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 16 '13 at 22:00

This worked for me:

 $backtrace = array_slice( debug_backtrace( 0 ), 0, 6);

 $export = var_export( $backtrace, TRUE );

You might need to tweak the slice amount so that it cuts out the circular reference. I had this issue while trying to do a var_export() on an exception while running a PHPUnit test.

Alternatives to var_export

3 Answers3