Custom widget frustrations (debugging is impossible)

[idebuglife]

1. How are we supposed to debug our code while building widgets in WHMCS? I have struggled to get any kind of output with var_dump, print_r, or dd() functions. 
2. Why is the following not working? I started with the widget example code but modified it slightly to get this...
3. The widget documentation is very weak, so I must unfortunately open a discussion here. I hope the answer to this will serve other people in the future with the same problem, surely I'm not the only one.

<?php

add_hook('AdminHomeWidgets', 1, function() {
    return new AwsMaintEventsWidget();
});


class AwsMaintEventsWidget extends \WHMCS\Module\AbstractWidget
{
    protected $title = 'Upcoming AWS Maintenance';
    protected $description = 'AWS maintenance events on the horizon...';
    protected $columns = 1;
    protected $weight = 1000;
    protected $cache = true;

    public function getData()
    {

        $test = 'josiahhh';
        $testtwo = 'dunno';

        return array(
           'counts' => $testtwo,
           'events' => $test,
        );
    }

    public function generateOutput($data) {

        $event = $data['events'];

        return <<<EOF
<div>
    <span>{$event}</span>
</div>
EOF;
    }

}

 

But oddly enough if I instead use this code from the "example widget" the documentation provides (see below) for the public function "getData()", it somehow *works*...my code is basically the same but simpler and doesn't!!?

 

    public function getData()
    {
        $counts = localApi('GetTicketCounts', array());

        $tickets = localApi('GetTickets', array('status' => 'Awaiting Reply', 'limitstart' => '0', 'limitnum' => '5'));

        return array(
            'tickets' => array(
                'counts' => $counts,
                'recent' => (isset($tickets['tickets']['ticket'])) ? $tickets['tickets']['ticket'] : [],
            ),
        );
    }

 

Edited January 7, 2020 by idebuglife

[brian!]

11 hours ago, idebuglife said:

How are we supposed to debug our code while building widgets in WHMCS? I have struggled to get any kind of output with var_dump, print_r, or dd() functions. 

you should just need to return the print_r instead of the EOF code...

return print_r($event);

11 hours ago, idebuglife said:

Why is the following not working? I started with the widget example code but modified it slightly to get this...

I copied & pasted that exact code into a new blank widget file and it worked fine.

11 hours ago, idebuglife said:

The widget documentation is very weak

I wouldn't disagree with that... you'll learn more by examining the code of the other existing widgets - nearly all of them are not encrypted.