FirePHP 1.0 uses Insight to collect application internal data and Wildfire to send this data to the client without interfering with the application. Both these projects are open source and intended to be ported to many programming languages.

More documentation on Wildfire will be available in time.

FirePHP uses a different wildfire mode to transfer data based on the configuration approach used:

1. If the Traditional: FirePHPCore approach is used ALL data is sent in the response headers.
2. If the Configure: constants or Configure: files approach is used only a small pointer is sent in the response headers and the client makes a secondary request to fetch the data. See Concepts for more information.

Wildfire Implementations

Official:

• PHP implementation (1 & 2): http://github.com/pinf/wildfire-php
• JavaScript implementation (1 & 2): http://github.com/pinf/wildfire-js

Java, Perl, Ruby and other language implementations are planned.

Third party:

• https://github.com/Seldaek/monolog/blob/master/src/Monolog/Handler/FirePHPHandler.php (1 only)

All data in headers (1)

Only a limited amount of data can be sent in the response headers before it may get trimmed in transport to the client. This is a limitation of sending data in the response headers. If more data needs to be sent see Secondary Request (2).

Any application can send log messages in the response headers and the FirePHP client will route these to the Firebug Console.

A simple Hello World message (response headers):

X-Wf-Protocol-1: http://meta.wildfirehq.org/Protocol/JsonStream/0.2
X-Wf-1-Plugin-1: http://meta.firephp.org/Wildfire/Plugin/FirePHP/Library-FirePHPCore/0.0.0master1106021548
X-Wf-1-Structure-1: http://meta.firephp.org/Wildfire/Structure/FirePHP/FirebugConsole/0.1
X-Wf-1-1-1-1: 63|[{"Type":"LOG","File":"/path/to/file","Line":10},"Hello World"]|
X-Wf-1-Index: 1

For more information see http://www.firephp.org/Wiki/Reference/Protocol

A bunch of examples can be found here: http://reference.developercompanion.com/Tools/FirePHPCompanion/Run/Examples/TestRunner/

Secondary Request (2)

Large amounts of data can be sent using this approach.

Any application can send a pointer message in the response headers and serve the log messages to the corresponding secondary client request. Depending on how the wildfire messages are addressed the client will direct them to the appropriate target.

A bunch of examples can be found here: http://reference.developercompanion.com/Tools/FirePHPCompanion/Run/Examples/TestRunner/

More documentation on the format of these messages will be available in time.

A simple pointer message (response headers):

x-request-id: 1309470322490165
x-wf-protocol-1: http://registry.pinf.org/cadorn.org/wildfire/@meta/protocol/component/0.1.0
x-wf-1-1-receiver: http://registry.pinf.org/cadorn.org/wildfire/@meta/receiver/transport/0
x-wf-1-1-1-sender: http://registry.pinf.org/cadorn.org/wildfire/packages/lib-php/lib/Wildfire/Transport.php
x-wf-1-1-1-1: 119||{"url":"http://example.com/","headers":{"x-insight":"transport"},"payload":{"key":"3a5d6bac25c2ed871e7344063fb5d183"}}|
x-wf-1-index: 1

The x-request-id header should be set to the same value as the corresponding header in the request.

Given the pointer message above, the client will make a call to:

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
x-insight: transport

payload=%7B%22key%22%3A%223a5d6bac25c2ed871e7344063fb5d183%22%7D

payload = encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify({key: "3a5d6bac25c2ed871e7344063fb5d183"}))

The client expects a wildfire payload in the response body:

x-wf-protocol-1: http://registry.pinf.org/cadorn.org/wildfire/@meta/protocol/component/0.1.0
x-wf-1-1-receiver: http://registry.pinf.org/cadorn.org/insight/@meta/receiver/console/page/0
x-wf-1-1-1-sender: http://registry.pinf.org/cadorn.org/github/firephp-libs/programs/standalone/examples/TestRunner/?lib=cadorn.org/github/firephp-libs/packages/insight@0.0.0master1106021548
x-wf-1-1-1-1: 217|{"context":"page","target":"console","file":"/path/to/file","line":11,"lang.id":"registry.pinf.org/cadorn.org/github/renderers/packages/php/master"}|{"origin":{"type":"text","text":"Hello World","lang.type":"string"}}|
x-wf-1-index: 1