Handy WordPress function that halts application.

I was recently stumped by the contents of a gravity forms object after submission. The project i was working on needed me to be able to manipulate some of the values before the form saved to that database. I had added the requested functionally but I wasn’t sure why it wasn’t working. Additionally I was unable to get a simple <?php var_dump(); ?> to register anything because i was asking for an array that showed up between page load and render.

I then stumbled onto <?php wp_die(); ?> this function is great. Halts the application in full and allows for a string to be displayed. In my case the string ended up being <?php wp_die( "Gravity Forms Object:" . var_export( $form_object ,true ) ); ?> .

wp_die reference link.