How to Add Laravel Debugbar to Laravel 5 for Powerful Debugging

Introduction

Laravel Debugbar

integrates the PHP Debug Bar into Laravel 5 to display debugging and error information during development. The package registers a ServiceProvider that adds a debug toolbar, front‑end assets, and Ajax request handling.

The extension includes the following custom collectors:

QueryCollector: shows all database queries, including bindings and execution time
RouteCollector: displays current route information
ViewCollector: lists loaded views (optional: shared data)
EventsCollector: lists all fired events
LaravelCollector: shows Laravel version and environment details
SymfonyRequestCollector: replaces RequestCollector, providing richer request/response data
LogsCollector: displays the latest entries from log files
FilesCollector: lists PHP include/require files
ConfigCollector: shows configuration values

Laravel also ships with built‑in collectors that are always loaded:

LogCollector: shows all log information (includes SwiftMailCollector and SwiftLogCollector for mail)
PhpInfoCollector
MessageCollector
TimeDataCollector (includes start‑up and application timing)
MemoryCollector
ExceptionsCollector

Note: Debugbar should only be used in development; it adds performance overhead, so disable it before deploying to production.

Installation and Configuration

Install the package via Composer: composer require barryvdh/laravel-debugbar After installation, register the service provider in config/app.php within the providers array: Barryvdh\Debugbar\ServiceProvider::class, Add the facade alias to the aliases array in the same file: 'Debugbar' => Barryvdh\Debugbar\Facade::class, Publish the configuration file to config using Artisan: php artisan vendor:publish If the debug option in config/app.php is set to true, the Debugbar is enabled by default. To disable it in production, edit config/debugbar.php and set enabled to false.