dump() without breaking your page or JSON response

1. Install Symfony VarDumper

Laravel already includes it. In other PHP projects, add it as a dev dependency.

composer require --dev symfony/var-dumper

2. Point VarDumper at Buggregator

Add two lines to your .env. In Docker Compose, replace 127.0.0.1 with the Buggregator service name, for example buggregator:9912.

VAR_DUMPER_FORMAT=server
VAR_DUMPER_SERVER=127.0.0.1:9912

3. Or set them in PHP

If your project does not use .env files, set the same values in code.

$_SERVER['VAR_DUMPER_FORMAT'] = 'server';
$_SERVER['VAR_DUMPER_SERVER'] = '127.0.0.1:9912';

4. Call dump() as usual

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000. Your response stays clean: no dump HTML mixed into the page or the JSON. Click the source location to open the file in your editor. This also works in queue workers, RoadRunner and Swoole, where a dump never reaches a browser.

dd() is sent to Buggregator too, but it still stops the script, as it always does.

VarDumper has a server mode. With VAR_DUMPER_FORMAT=server, it sends each dump over TCP to the address in VAR_DUMPER_SERVER instead of printing it. Buggregator listens on port 9912 and renders what arrives. One limit: on the Windows binary, the VarDumper module (port 9912) does not work.