[JAVA] [HOW TO] Easy way to debug when generating PDF files with PHP etc.

Hello. I think there is still a lot of work to generate PDF files on the server side. Even if the Web has penetrated so much, I think that it is the most suitable method when you want to print PDF related to forms or publish Adobe Illustrator files easily. Of course, I think there is a lot of development work that dynamically generates PDF files on the server side. However, debugging is difficult when generating a PDF file on the server side. There are three main debugging methods below.

** (1) Generate PDF by print debugging Debugging while sneaking around with the numerical values and characters. ** **

Print debugging such as print and PHP's var_dump is the easiest, but you can't know how the PDF file is actually generated until you generate the PDF at the end.

** (2) Generate a log file on the server and debug while checking **

You can definitely check how the PDF is generated from the PDF logic, but it takes a lot of time to debug because it is necessary to check the log output to the server to check the calculated values etc. .. It's not a very realistic method.

** (3) Use a full-fledged debugger **

If you install debugging software (xdebug, etc.) on the server that generates PDF, you can perform full-scale debugging. You can probably debug efficiently. However, it is necessary to install the software separately on the server, and I think that there are many cases where it cannot be installed in the first place.

** ■ Let's develop easily and efficiently for the time being **

So let's use edump, which is as easy to use as print debugging and easy to grasp the status of data. 　　http://www.edump.net/

With edump, it doesn't matter what you're displaying on your browser screen, and you don't need to install any special software on the server, so you can easily debug. With the browser's developer extensions, you'll have a full-fledged development environment in no time. You can efficiently check the debug value while checking the status of the PDF generated on the server side.

Unlike desktop applications, WEB applications have some aspects that can be easily developed and some that are troublesome, but I think it is better to select an efficient method according to the situation.