I'm not sure if my issue would be related or not, but I am having a few issues with xdebug and laravel. It's somewhat similar in that I can't really set breakpoints anywhere and get the details I want. I was able to make a simple breakpoint work in my routes though. My problem is that I get a trace, but no variables.

I created a simple route and ran it with three different variables. The first, I just created two simple arrays and xdebug shows everything. Second, I pulled in the user model using User::where() and everything works correctly. Lastly I used User::find and I get back nothing. When I try to do any breakpoint from within a controller or anywhere else other than this simple route or the index.php file, I get back "Variables are not available".

Route 1 pic
Route 2 pic
Route 3 pic fails

I use CodeLobster for debugging and it's free and work very well no need to append XDEBUG query strings to URL or anything simply works, probably because it works with their debug library. Problem is Codelobster only for Windows platform. so if you're working on Windows platform its worth trying it.

Debug Laravel with CodeLobster

I have the same problem!

And then I found the default path mapping created by phpstrom is "public => \home\vagrant\Code\Laravel\public" ,and so you can only debug the file under public dictionary.

I add another path mapping that to \home\vagrant\Code\Laravel, and then it's work well

hope this help you

I am having the same problem, I solved it by creating php remote debug in the run/debug configurations

I was not able to get it working on PHPStorm, but it works with VS Code really well through PHP Debug extension.