Drupal 8 Debugging: Kareful Klicking in Kint

Published June 4, 2016

Sample Kint output

Drupal 8's new theming system is a thing of beauty. As part of the massive changes to the Drupal 8 (front- and back-end) developer experience, the Devel module for Drupal 8 comes with a new variable inspector. Say goodbye to Krumo, and say hello to Kint. Like its predecessor, when you install the Devel project on a Drupal 8 local environment, you automatically get the Kint module as well (like Krumo, there are no additional downloads). Using Kint is similar to using Krumo, where in Drupal 7, any dsm($variable_name) or dpm($variable_name) call automatically used Krumo to display variables on the page in a way that made it easy(ier?) to dive into the many Drupal PHP arrays and objects. In Drupal 8, kint($variable_name) can be used to output any variable - this works in template files as well via {{ kint(variable_name) }}.

It took me a few weeks to get comfortable with Kint, mainly due to one small interface thing; clicking on the "+" icon in a Kint output recursively opens all the arrays and objects. Depending on the variable you're Kint-ing, this could result in a lot of output to sort through (and, depending on your machine, browser, and site configuration, it could take more than a few seconds to fully render).

Open all the Kint arrays and objects.

After a few weeks of instinctively (and incorrectly) clicking on the "+ button every time I used Kint, I've now retrained myself to utilize it in a much more efficient manner.

  1. I almost never click on the "+" anymore. Rather, I click output anywhere other than the "+" to open just that portion of the output.

    Non-recursive clicking in Kint.
  2. I download and install the Search Kint module whenever I download and install the Devel module for a local environment. This provides an almost-too-convenient-to-believe search box with each Kint output that makes finding things almost trivial.

    Using the Search Kint module.

Using Kint efficiently is one of the skills that every Drupal 8 developer should have. Combined with an interactive debugger, there's virtually nothing that can't be easily discovered when a developer can wield both of these tools.

Learn more about Drupal 8 module and theme development debugging by attending a DrupalEasy workshop!

Comments

One more Kint hint: If you click the arrow to the right of a variable, it opens that variable in a new browser tab. Makes it easy to track changes to a variable over several pages or inspect a variable you printed from a template that is rendered in a tiny part of the page like a sidebar block.

Submitted by mikeker (not verified) on Mon, 06/06/2016 - 15:53

simply clicking the + and having to wait MINUTES. I really mean absolutely ages. I thought it was broken. At least knowing that clicking on the title helps. But does anyone else have problems with it being sooooo slow?

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Thu, 08/04/2016 - 10:30

// Prevent Kint from loading too much debug output and crashing the request.
if (file_exists("$app_root/modules/contrib/devel/kint/kint/Kint.class.php")) {
require_once "$app_root/modules/contrib/devel/kint/kint/Kint.class.php";
Kint::$maxLevels = 4;
}

Submitted by Brandon (not verified) on Sat, 03/24/2018 - 18:12

I have spent few months not knowing about that and it was killing my chrome :D
thank you for saving me :D LOL

Submitted by Jakub (not verified) on Thu, 04/12/2018 - 11:30

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