In this episode, we're diving into debugging inside Twig templates. When working with templates, it's super common to want to see what values you have or inspect complex data you've passed in—so that's what we're focusing on here.
We start by making sure Twig's debug mode is only switched on when appropriate (like, not in production!). The debug setting is now tied to our app's configuration, making it safer and more flexible. Then, we add the Twig debug extension, which unlocks the dump
function for us directly in templates.
To practice, we pass an array of users down to the template—think of it as a preview of database results to come. We see what happens when we naively try to print the whole array (array to string conversion
error!) and then switch to using dump
to safely and clearly inspect what's actually in our arrays.
We also play around with what happens when debug mode is turned off—reminding us to keep debugging tools disabled in production. As a finishing touch, we use a Twig loop to iterate over the users and output each one's name, showing off the basics of handling lists in a template.
By the end, you'll know how to inspect data in your Twig templates, avoid common pitfalls, and loop over arrays for custom output. It's all about making your template debugging and development way smoother!