Although most of the convenience methods will be removed from CakePHP going forward (see the note about basics.php), and I say good riddance, you still have the opportunity to add your own to bootstrap.php.
For example a couple that I like are wrappers for var_dump(). The main reason being is that var_dump() will properly display NULL and FALSE. Unlike debug() and pr() (alias to) print_r(), which will show… well… nothing.
So here you go:
function vd($var) {
if(Configure::read() > 0) {
echo '<pre>';
echo var_dump($var);
echo '</pre>';
}
}
if(Configure::read() > 0) {
echo '<pre>';
echo var_dump($var);
echo '</pre>';
}
}
Or, if you’d like to die() out: