Xdebug is using cookies to keep track of a debug session when started through a browser. However, Postman is an API client and doesn’t necessarily use cookies. How can we initiate a debug session in such a case?
Start a debug session in Postman
The debug session is initiated with the XDEBUG_SESSION=idekey cookie in a browser, but there
are other ways to start a browser session as well. Appending XDEBUG_SESSION_START=idekey to
an URL has the same effect. Using this particular URL parameter makes Xdebug emit a cookie with
the XDEBUG_SESSION name set to the value of the XDEBUG_SESSION_START parameter value.
An example URL to start a debug session in Phpstorm will look like this:
https://api.example.com/users?XDEBUG_SESSION_START=PHPSTORM
The cookie expiry is one hour by default, so the subsequent request doesn’t need to contain the XDEBUG_SESSION_START
parameter anymore.
Stop a debug session in Postman
To stop the existing debug session append XDEBUG_SESSION_STOP=idekey to an URL.
An example URL to stop a debug session in Phpstorm will look like this:
https://api.example.com/users?XDEBUG_SESSION_STOP=PHPSTORM
The same method can be used to start and stop debug session from a command line using, for example, curl request.