Check if xdebug is working

Question

Without installing a texteditor or an IDE, is it possible to test if xdebug is working, i.e. if it can debug php code?

The only part xdebug comes up in phpinfo() is

Answer 1

Run

php -m -c

in your terminal, and then look for [Zend Modules]. It should be somewhere there if it is loaded!

NB

If you're using Ubuntu, it may not show up here because you need to add the xdebug settings from /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini into /etc/php5/cli/php.ini. Mine are

[xdebug]
zend_extension = /usr/lib/php5/20121212/xdebug.so
xdebug.remote_enable=on
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_mode=req
xdebug.remote_host=localhost
xdebug.remote_port=9000

Answer 2

If you are using Eclipse then please note that while running on XDebug mode the magic constant __FILE__ will always be evaluated to:

xdebug://debug-eval

So the following check will return true if your session is under XDebug:

$is_xdebug = false !== strpos(__FILE__,'xdebug'); // true while on XDebug