Tapper is a tiny debugger for PHP. Call tp($value) anywhere in your code and the payload streams live into a terminal UI running as a separate process — like console.log, but with a dedicated, scrollable, filterable viewer instead of stdout.

<?php

tp('👋 Hello, this is Tapper');
tp('A tiny debugger for PHP');
tp('You can send debug messages, just like console.log in JS');

tp('It can also send structured data:');
tp(['fruits' => ['apple', 'banana', 'pineapple']]);

tp('Or even very long structured data');
tp(['fruits' => ['apple', 'banana', 'pineapple', 'orange', 'strawberry', 'blueberry', 'pear'], 'accounts' => [['name' => 'Alice', 'email' => 'alice@ec.net', 'subscribe' => false, 'age' => 26], ['name' => 'John', 'email' => 'john@ec.net', 'subscribe' => true, 'age' => 21], ['name' => 'Jane', 'email' => 'jane@ec.net', 'subscribe' => true, 'age' => 31]]]);

tp('You can pause code execution...');
foreach (range(1, 3) as $i) {
    tp("Paused in loop at iteration $i")->wait();
    tp('That will run after wait');
}

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇

Installation

Tapper hasn't been released yet and isn't on Packagist, so composer require won't work. For now, clone the repo and install it from source:

git clone https://github.com/tapperphp/tapper.git
cd tapper
composer install

Requires PHP 8.2+ (tested on 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4).

Usage

Start the TUI in one terminal — it opens a local socket and waits for a script to connect:

php bin/tapper

Then, in another terminal, run any PHP script that calls tp() (see the example above, or examples/BasicExample.php) — its output streams into the TUI live:

php examples/BasicExample.php

Keyboard shortcuts

• ↑/↓ (or k/j), g/G — move the cursor, jump to top/bottom
• Enter / Space — open the details view for the selected log (syntax-highlighted payload, source snippet, stack trace); ↑/↓/←/→ scroll it, Backspace/Esc closes it
• / — filter logs live as you type; Enter confirms, Esc clears the filter and returns to the live tail
• Enter — also resumes a script paused on tp(...)->wait()
• Ctrl+L — clear all logs
• ? — shortcuts popup, q — quit

Documentation

For the two-process architecture, the TUI's component model, and the wire protocol between a debuggee script and the TUI, see docs/.

Testing

composer test:unit   # Pest
composer test:lint   # Pint (check only)

🚧 Project Status

This project is in active development and not yet ready for production use.
Expect breaking changes before v1.0 is released.