I am working in a complex Webframework with lots of Javascript in the Frontend and lots of PHP in the backend. Since I’m new to it, finding out the workflow is quite a hassle. Is there a way to log the complete sequence of function calls (in PHP, JS or both) from the moment a request is sent until the response is executed (or the JS after the request has been sent is executed?) That would be really helpfull.
There's no perfect solution here but you will probably have to just use browser debugging tools like Firefox's Firebug or Chrome's debugger . Using these tools you can see JavaScript errors, AJAX requests, PHP (server) responses, individual page file loads etc etc.
All I can think of would be using Chrome developer tools, network tab in order to see the sequence of events. Or maybe even better, the HTTPFox plugin in firefox.
That will help you to find out the execution order of JS calls and which PHP files are accessed via AJAX.
What's happening on server side isn't easy to follow, but you could debug your code using XDebug.
Related
So I am using AJAX to call a server file which uses WordPress to populate a pages content and return. Which I than use to populate fields. Now what I am confused about is, how do I create the snapshot and what do I have to do to make google know I am creating one besides #! also why do I do this? The escaped_fragments are a little unclear to and hope I could get a more detailed explanation. Does anyone have any tutorials that walk you through this process similar to what I am doing?
David
Google's crawlers don't typically run your JavaScript. They hit your page, scrape your HTML, and move on. This is much more efficient than loading your page and all of its resources, running your JavaScript, guessing at when everything finished loading, and then scraping data out of the DOM.
If your site uses AJAX to populate the page with content, this is a problem for Google and others. Your page is effectively empty... void of any content... in its HTML state. It requires your JavaScript to fill it in. Since the crawlers don't run your JavaScript, your page isn't all that useful to the crawler.
These days, there are an awful lot of sites that blend the line between web-based applications and content-driven sites. These sites (like yours) require client-side code to run to get the content. Google doesn't have the resources to do this on every site they encountered, but they did provide an option. That's the info you found about escaped anchor fragments.
Google has given you the opportunity to do the work of scraping the full finished DOM for them. They have put the CPU and memory burden of running your JavaScript back on you. You can signify to Google that this is encouraged by using links with #!. Google sees this and knows that they can then request the same page, but convert everything after #! (which isn't sent to the server) to ?_escaped_fragment_= and make a request to your server. At this point, your server should generated a snapshot of the complete finished DOM, after JavaScript has ran.
The good news is that these days you don't have to hack a lot of code in place to do it. I've written a server to do this using PhantomJS. (I'm trying to get permission to open the source code up, but it's in legal limbo, sorry!) Basically, PhantomJS is a full webkit web browser but it runs without a GUI. You can use PhantomJS to load your site, run all the JavaScript, and then when its ready scrape the HTML back out of the page and send that version to Google. This doesn't require you to do anything special, other than fix your routing to point requests with _escaped_fragment_ at your snapshot server.
You can do this in about 20 lines of code. PhantomJS even has a mini web server built into it, but they recommend not using it for production code.
I hope this helps clear up some confusion!
I need to load content from a remote uri into a PHP variable locally. The remote page only shows content when JavaScript is turned on. How can I get around this?
Essentially, how can I use cURL for pages requiring JavaScript loaded content?
Mink was the only php headless browswer that I could find.
As noted selenium is another popular choice. I don't know how good of performance these will offer though if you have a lot of scraping to do. They seem to be more geared towards testing?
A number of other languages have them which are listed in the link below. Since php does does not process javascript you will need another tool. Headless browswers expose the javascript engine and allow you to interact with the browser programattically.
headless internet browser?
To do this you have to emulate a browser using a browser plugin such as selenium. This will involve slightly more than just a simple get request though.
http://seleniumhq.org/
I have created a html page which sends custom data to a php file which then processes and evaluates it.
My next task is to make this into a GUI with the requirements:
1. A box for a custom search with button (it then posts this into the
php)
2. A box where xml/json request can be seen
3. A box where the xml/json response can be seen
4. A box where the parsed version is translated and made to look pretty.
***MUST CONNECT TO INTERNET, PHP ESTABLISHES CONNECTION BUT DO NOT WANT A GUI ISSUE
Any suggestions on programs or languages etc which can help me communicate with PHP in GUI form. It needs to be able to access the internet!
I was thinking perhaps Visual Basic as that's the only one I've ever used that really uses GUI's but I'm wondering what you all think!
Thanks!
Basically, what you're asking for is a web browser, with a very simple little HTML/Javascript front-end web page to make the PHP calls and display the results. I'm not entirely sure what it is about a browser environment that makes you think it's unsuitable, but it's basically exactly what you're asking for.
If a full-blown web browser really isn't suitable, you could try using a web browser control inside a simple GUI app. This would still work exactly the same, but would be without the browser controls, such as the URL bar.
Just use a browser.
If you don't want to do that -- build a browser.
If you are just looking for basically a web-based REST testing tool, try the Firefox RESTClient plug-in.
Why don't you use a framework ?
You may take a look here:
AppJS for Linux, Windows and Mac using HTML, CSS and Javascript
Adobe AIR : cross-platform using ActionScript/FLEX or HTML/Javascript
Titanium : HTML/CSS (no support anymore)
PhoneGap : mainly used for cross-phone-platform, but here's an Windows implementation of it (you should read the README.md ...)
You may also check this from Mozilla
Disclaimer: May be a insane question but I have suffered a lot so came here.
I am working on a legacy application which uses JS + PHP + Web services (Written in spring).
Flow of the application :
Whenever any web service is called from JS it is redirected to one php file. The php file authenticates the user(using one web service) and then forwards the request to actual web service.
How can I debug this application ? I have debugged JS using Firebug and servr side code using Eclipse but never debugged such a application.
~Ajinkya.
I think there are a variety of things that need to be done, and I must say this question is sufficiently general as to not have a straight answer so I will do my best. As xdazz mentioned, var_dump (and die) are necessary from the PHP standpoint.
Whenever anything is returned to JS console.log it. In addition, ensure XHTTP requests are turned on for Firebug or alternatively view the output of each request in the Chrome Network tab.
With a combination of console.log, var_dump, and die, you can trace non-functioning parts of the application repeatedly step by step until you come across the bug.
Alternatively, and in the long run you ought to be doing this anyway, build error handling code into all the PHP code that is only activated when a debug flag is set to true. This way you can get detailed error messages and then when you deploy, you can turn them off to avoid compromising security.
If you are needing to inspect the entire lifecycle of a Web service request in your scenario you will need to combine a several techniques. Considering the fact that the scope of your scenario spans from client to server you will need to decide with what you will persist the information you need to inspect.
Personally, I would choose the path of least resistance which in my case would probably be cookies. With that being said you should be able chronologically log the necessary information via JavaScript and PHP, both before, during and after the request and even redirect has occurred.
This strategy would then allow for the information logged with cookies to then be dumped or analyzed via JavaScript, WebKit inspector or Firebug. Again, this is probably how I would handle such a scenario. Lastly, you can apply different storage strategies to this technique such as using a session or database for persistence.
Note: You can use something like WebKit Inspector, and possibly Firebug, to analyze data transmitted and received for GET, POST and even WebSocket requests.
I've a php file calling another php file which sometimes calls another php file to execute some actions (all through ajax).
What I use to do was to echo at different points to know upto where the codes are executing properly. But with this approach, I can keep echo-ing.
So how do I know upto where my code is executing?? Is there a tool for Google Chrome browser to detect it??
In your web browser, click the wrench icon, then "Tools", then "Developer tools". You can debug and step through JavaScript, you can see a timeline of requests with the request and response headers and bodies fully inspectable, etc. You should be able to debug all your AJAX request without any additional software/plugins.
Firebug plugin for Firefox allows you to put actual debug breakpoints and step through the code - much easier to debug javascript than echo'ing
If you look on how to set a debugging environent with PHP, you'll find a lot of dead ends, trust me, I did. Therefore you've got 2 choices.
A: Keep echo-ing which will leave a trail of painful echo's in your code.
B: Use a logger. I've used for a while FirePHP, which comes as a FireBug extension and lets you send debugging messages to the browser, which is ideal for debugging Javascript based apps with heavy Ajax.
Hope I can help!
The technique you're using is called bullet tracing. There's no real way to track which code executes and when within an php file (like breakpoints) but you can pinpoint points of errors on lines of code as provided by the php debugger.
When AJAX requests are made, you can track the progress through XMLHttpRequest States. To check the headers and payload of the packets being sent, you could use Firebug in Firefox 3.6.x, Firefox 4 Beta's built-in developer console, or Google Chrome's developer console. (Packet sniffers also work)