The VarDumper component provides mechanisms for walking through any arbitrary PHP variable. It provides a better dump() function that you can use instead of var_dump(). The VarDumper component creates a global dump() function that you can use instead of e.g. var_dump. By using it, you’ll gain per object and resource types specialized view to e.g. filter out Doctrine internals while dumping a single proxy entity, or get more insight on opened files with stream_get_meta_data. Configurable output formats, HTML or colored command line output. Ability to dump internal references, either soft ones (objects or resources) or hard ones (=& on arrays or objects properties). Repeated occurrences of the same object/array/resource won’t appear again and again anymore. Moreover, you’ll be able to inspect the reference structure of your data. Ability to operate in the context of an output buffering handler.