Last updated April 8, 2022
Devel is a popular developer module containing a variety of developer and debugging utilities that make it more efficient to perform common development tasks. The Devel module includes the Webprofiler, Devel generate and Kint modules. Devel also features Drush integration and provides several custom Drush commands. Devel and its associated submodules are meant to be used on local development environments and should not be enabled on live production sites.
- As a Devel submodule, Webprofiler can give you insight into a variety of performance-related metrics related to database queries and requests and it can also tell you which route and controller are behind any page on your site.
- Devel generate is used for generating sample or dummy content like menu items, taxonomy terms, and nodes. The process of using Devel generate to generate content is essentially the same for Drupal 7 and 8.
- Kint is a variable debugging tool and provides the
kint()
function, which is a "pretty-print" version of PHP's var_dump()
function.
- The main Devel module also provides the debugging function
dpm()
which can be used to print out debugging messages in the messages block of a page.
Example tasks
- Use Webprofiler to learn the names of the routes or controllers responsible for output on any page
- Quickly generate dummy content (menu items, terms, and nodes) for a development site
- Use Kint to debug a variable during theme development
Confidence
Devel has been a popular developer module and suite of tools since Drupal 6. As such, learning materials exist for Devel that can be quite dated. For current features and compatibility see the Drush project page on drupal.org.
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