cetola.net

I hate logging and debugging in Flex. HATE it. You can trace, which is about as useful as a javascript alert. You can use as3-commons-logging, but this still lacks the robustness of something like log4j and certainly lacks the user-friendliness of something like FireBug.

In fact, my biggest gripe is that I want debugging to be like in FireBug even though I program for Flash. I want to be able to walk down the tree of any object I log, I want to be able to change values of strings and ints on a breakpoint and see the visual reactions, and I want to be able to highlight my app like I’m highlighting the DOM elements in FireBug. So, I assumed this was just too much to ask.

I finally broke down when rewriting the front end to a simple survey app recently. I was copying over my “logger class” that basically allows me to dump a bunch of text to the console (just like I’m programming in VB6 on my fancy new Gateway desktop and it’s slick Pentium II processor!). So, without much hope, I typed in “Debugging Flex” into google, said a prayer to the FireBug gods, and hit return.

This is the debugger.

And this is how to attach it to a flex / adobe air / flash application in a nice, logger factory kinda way.