I was always looking for a quick playground for testing/debugging any PHP application esp. for Magento 2.
Luckily, I got to know about Tinkerwell App in some Twitter feed and thought of giving it a try.
If you don’t know about the Tinerwell app
Tinkerwell is the magical code editor that runs your code within local and remote PHP applications. In other words, it’s a RELP(read-eval-print loop) for PHP.
Though there are some tools like:
- PHP’s interactive mode in CLI (
php -a), - psysh
- n98-magerun’s dev:console
But the main advantage of the Tinkerwell app over others is that it can tinker locally and also remotely(via SSH). Also, it has official IDE plugins so that you can run code directly from your favorite code editor(VSCode, Sublime Text 3, and PhpStorm).
Installation
Tinkerwell is a commercial app that only costs around 15 USD and really worth it.
After purchasing, you will get an email with a link to download the app along with the license key.
After downloading you can simply install the installer file and configure the License Key, so nothing fancy about it.
Configuring for Magento 2
Currently(as the time of writing), the major PHP applications supported by Tinkerwell app are:
- Magento 2
- Laravel
- Symfony
- WordPress
- Drupal
- Typo3
- Prestashop
The full list can be found at – github.com/tinkerwellapp/drivers
Tinkerwell “drivers” determine how the application should be bootstrapped – and can even provide variables that should be available automatically.
Since Magento 2 is supported by default, you just need to set the working directory in local or remote.
Tinkering with Magento 2 Locally
Open the app and click on the folder icon (1) and set your local Magento 2 working directory(2). That’s it.
Now, you can run/debug any Magento 2 code (core & custom) with the real-time preview on the right pane. For example, it may look like
Fig: Running code with Tinkerwell
Fig: Running selected code in PHPStorm with Tinkerwell
$objectManager variable is available by default (via Magento 2 driver)
Troubleshooting
Problem: If you are getting an error
Zend_Db_Adapter_Exception with message ‘SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory’
Solution: Just replace ‘localhost’ with the IP address(127.0.0.1) for DB host in the file app/etc/env.php
Tinkering with Magento 2 Remotely (via SSH)
For remote interactive debugging, you can connect via Action (1) > Connect Via SSH. You will see a similar popup as below:
Just fill up the SSH login details and connect(2). Now you are able to able to run the code remotely.
Conclusion
Though there are some alternatives, Tinkerwell works quite well locally and remotely for testing out any PHP code (not only limited to Laravel, Magento 2, or other PHP frameworks). It’s really quite helpful in quick testing/debugging any PHP code and saves a lot of time.
You might be interested in following Twitter discussion: