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Jeremy Gillick

DebugLogger 0.1

What is this?

This is a developer extension for firefox & thunderbird that provides a better alternative to using the dump statment. It breaks up debug statements to be unique per extension or project and let's you view them independantly in a clean colsole

How do I use it?

Start by putting debug statments within your extension using this API, like below:

1: logMngr = Components.classes["@mozmonkey.com/debuglogger/manager;1"] .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIDebugLoggerManager); 2: logger = logMngr.registerLogger("myapp"); 3: logger.log(3, "Hello World");

Now fire up your Firefox or Thunderbird, click Tools > Debug Logger and trip this debug statment in your extension. You should see 'Hello World' pop up in the console.

Code Breakdown

Line 1  Get the DebugLogger service

Line 2  Register your app with the logger (a logger object is returned). The name you provide should be unique and specific to your app.

Line 3  Send the debug message "Hello World" at a debug level of 3. The debug level is very important, it helps you mask certain debug statments from the consol; where 1 is most generic and 5 is the most specific. In the console you can choose what level of debug statments to watch by selecting the level from the drop-down menu.

Using the console

Click Tools > Debug Logger to open the colsole.

• Select what app you want to watch by selecting it's name from the first drop-down menu
  
  
• Limit the level of debug statments by selecting a number from the second drop-down menu (5 shows all messages, 1 shows only the broadest messages)
  
  
• The Clear button empties all the log messages for the selected project (loggers)
  
  
• The Clear All button empties log message for all projects (loggers)
  
  
• Pause will stop collecting log messages from all projects (loggers)
  
  
• Options let's you set the maximum log buffer size. The loggers will only save up to a certain number of log messages, this dialog will let you turn that up or down.
  
  
• When you click on a row (or ctrl-click, shift-click for many rows) you can copy it/them by pressing ctrl-C
  
  

Special Hints and Tips

In order to prevent errors when somebody runs your extension without the debug logger installed, you should construct a custom wrapper function that will envoke the logger. This way it can be turned off from a single source between development and production.

When a user reports a problem with your extension, you can have them install the DebugLogger so they can provide you with important debugging data to save you lot's of time.

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