debug PHP the JS way

We use CI (http://codeigniter.com/) in almost all our projects and since in JS got console.log our PHP debug/output was lagging behind with it's own print_r. Every good thing is eventually dumped by another new good thing so after lookin around for debug solutions in PHP and the fact, we almost all time share browser screen with firebug window FirePHP (http://www.firephp.org/) was the reasonable path.

For installation we just need to copy all files form archive to /ci/application/libraries/firephp_library and wrapper class looks something like

<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
require "firephp_library/FirePHP.class.php";
class Firephp_library extends FirePHP {
    function __construct() {
    parent::init();
}
}

After that we can use it in controller:

//load library

$this->load->library('Firephp_library');

Then i took it for a test drive...