Laravel Debug Session Tracer

Minimal, file-based API lifecycle tracing for Laravel.

This package is now focused only on tracing API request/response/error lifecycle events. No Trace ID filtering, no admin/debug extras, and no job debugging.

Install

composer require akhtar/laravel-debug-tracer

Publish configuration

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=debug-tracer-config

Required configuration

Set these in .env:

DEBUG_TRACER_ENABLED=true
DEBUG_TRACER_TTL_MINUTES=30
DEBUG_TRACER_MATCHING_HEADER=X-Debug-Token

Config (config/debug-tracer.php) options used in this minimal mode:

• enabled
• session_ttl_minutes
• storage_path
• matching_header
• route_middleware
• register_routes
• attach_api_middleware

Scheduler setup (recommended)

The package provides debug-tracer:cleanup and auto-schedules it every 5 minutes.

Make sure your app scheduler is running in your environment:

php artisan schedule:work

Routes

• POST /debug/start
• POST /debug/stop
• GET /debug/export/{session_id}
• GET /debug-dashboard
• GET /debug-dashboard/logs/{session_id}

Lifecycle behavior

Start session

POST /debug/start

Body:

{
  "token": "Bearer 3011|your-api-token"
}

What happens:

1. All old session files in storage are removed.
2. A new active session is created.
3. New API lifecycle events are appended to this session file.

Stop session

POST /debug/stop

Body:

{
  "session_id": "uuid"
}

Header:

X-Debug-Token: your-api-token

What happens:

1. Session ownership is validated by token.
2. Session meta/log files are deleted immediately.
3. Export is no longer possible for that stopped session.

Export logs

GET /debug/export/{session_id}?token=Bearer your-api-token

Returns NDJSON of captured API lifecycle entries.

Dashboard behavior

In /debug-dashboard:

• Start button is disabled while a session is active.
• Stop and Export are disabled until a session is active.
• After stop, Stop and Export are disabled again.
• The UI only shows API request/response/error lifecycle details.

Storage

Default path:

• storage/debug-traces/{session_id}.meta.json
• storage/debug-traces/{session_id}.log

On new session start, all old files are deleted first. On stop, current session files are deleted immediately.