Debug WordPress 404 issues (permalinks, rewrite rules, etc.)

gistfile1.aw

/* Produces a dump on the state of WordPress when a not found error occurs */
/* useful when debugging permalink issues, rewrite rule trouble, place inside functions.php */

ini_set( 'error_reporting', -1 );
ini_set( 'display_errors', 'On' );

echo '<pre>';

add_action( 'parse_request', 'debug_404_rewrite_dump' );
function debug_404_rewrite_dump( &$wp ) {
    global $wp_rewrite;

    echo '<h2>rewrite rules</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp_rewrite->wp_rewrite_rules(), true );

    echo '<h2>permalink structure</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp_rewrite->permalink_structure, true );

    echo '<h2>page permastruct</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp_rewrite->get_page_permastruct(), true );

    echo '<h2>matched rule and query</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp->matched_rule, true );

    echo '<h2>matched query</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp->matched_query, true );

    echo '<h2>request</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp->request, true );

    global $wp_the_query;
    echo '<h2>the query</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp_the_query, true );
}
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'debug_404_template_redirect', 99999 );
function debug_404_template_redirect() {
    global $wp_filter;
    echo '<h2>template redirect filters</h2>';
    echo var_export( $wp_filter[current_filter()], true );
}
add_filter ( 'template_include', 'debug_404_template_dump' );
function debug_404_template_dump( $template ) { 
    echo '<h2>template file selected</h2>';
    echo var_export( $template, true );
    
    echo '</pre>';
    exit();
}

Very nice gist!! Pro tip: you can make it conditional by checking for, e.g. GET parameter:

if (!isset($_GET['debug'])) return;

<gist code>

Ps. I know we should never touch unsanitized parameters from web request but I assume you would never expose this to public, only local/dev/uat, etc.

saving me 5 years later, thanks for this!

This is awesome. TY!

Thanks!

How do you use this file?

@jl2035 Place the code above into the functions.php file, then go to a page/post that causes redirect

I'm curious - which part of this deals with errors/404 redirects? At a glance, it seems like it would print things to the screen multiple times per page request.

@nickchomey You are right, most of this is debugging code, however the template_redirect hook is the redirect part. You could add in there something along the lines of the following to only do this on 404's.

global $wp_query;

if ($wp_query->is_404) { 
    // do stuff
}

Cool, thanks! That's what I figured. I'll probably move most of that code into the template_redirect function, wrapped in a check like youve provided. Maybe dump the php superglobals as well.

Thank you so much! I was losing my mind and your code helped me figure out the problem.