Printing debug output to console in Codeception

Question

Very thick question, but is there any way to print your own debug messages to the console in Codeception? I mean messages that have nothing to do with assertions, purely for debugging the tests themselves (e.g. like you would var_dump() a variable in any regular PHP website)

I have already tried var_dump(), echo and print but to no avail. Using WebDebug's makeAResponseDump() doesn't produce the required results neither, I just want to be able to see my variable's content without having to run a debugger like xdebug.

Answer 1

See Debugging which says

You may print any information inside a test using the codecept_debug function.

And I'm using it in my *Cept class:

codecept_debug($myVar);

Your debug output is only visible when you run with --debug (-v doesn't show it, but -vv and -vvv do):

codecept run --debug

And the output looked like:

Validate MyEntity table insert (MyCept) 
Scenario:
* I persist entity "AppBundle\Entity\MyEntity"

  AppBundle\Entity\MyEntity Object
  (
      [Id:AppBundle\Entity\MyEntity:private] => 1
      [Description:AppBundle\Entity\MyEntity:private] => Description
  )

 PASSED