PhpStorm is not receiving xdebug connections : PhpStorm event log : Cannot evaluate expression 'isset($_SERVER['PHP_IDE_CONFIG'])'

Question

I configured everything for PhpStorm and xdebug to work, I\'m running Ubuntu 14.04.

the connection back to the IDE is not established, and I get this in the IDE eve

Answer 1

I had this problem as well and tried every trick I could find, but nothing worked. For me, debugging works most of the time, but sometimes it just stops working with the message: "Cannot accept external Xdebug connection: Cannot evaluate expression 'isset($_SERVER['PHP_IDE_CONFIG'])'"

So I eventually realized I had a compilation error in my code (misspelled method name - PhpStorm does not always report these things, at least in my setup). As soon as I corrected the error debugging started working again. Maybe this can help someone struggling.

Although I still have issues with breakpoints not being hit, I can throw in a "xdebug_break();" line in the code and debugging becomes more reliable. The downside with using xdebug_break instead of breakpoints is (apart from the fact that it's more work than just adding a breakpoint) the local variables not being displayed in the PhpStorm debugger for some reason (only globals are shown). That makes debugging less convenient, but at least I can make it work.

Apparently you can't have everything :) Coming from the Java world, good debugging is just something I have been able to take for granted, but I have now realized how spoiled I have been :)