This presentation introduces you into the usage of custom Debugging templates in Lucee and how to write your own as well as populate them with own data. The talk is targeted towards lucee, but still also applicable to ACF.

1. Debugging templates DIY
Gert Franz
Rasia GmbH

2. MY EVOLUTION
Assembler  Basic  Clipper  Pascal  Delphi  Java  CFML  Lucee

3. WHO AM I?
• Gert Franz
– Involved with Lucee and Railo since day 1
– Into CFML for 17 years
– DBA, System architect
– CTO Rasia Ltd, CTO Rasia CH
• Rasia is founding Member of the Lucee
association

4. WHO AM I?
• Studied Astrophysics in München
• Basic, dBase, Clipper, Visual Basic, Delphi, Java
• Performance, DB & Code Tuning is my professional
Hobby
• I live in Switzerland
• Lucee training, consulting, support etc.

7. Official definition:
Determines how to display
debugging output

8. DEBUGGING IN LUCEE
• Consists of 2.5 parts
• Enabling debugging
• Selecting the debugging template
• Using the debugging logs

9. OK SO LET'S HAVE A LOOK

10. WHAT YOU END UP WITH:

12. TEMPLATES? WHAT? WHERE?
• A debugging template in Lucee is:
– A cfc located in a specific folder
– Containing a body needed for configuration
– Containing a method called "output" which handles
the display of the data

14. LET'S INSPECT THE CLASSIC.CFC TEMPLATE
• Content of the body of the CFC
– Is not necessary for execution
– Only cofiguration
• Output method
• Arguments of the output method

15. ARGUMENTS SCOPE OF FUNCTION OUTPUT
• Custom
• Debugging
• Context

16. A CLOSER LOOK AT THE DEBUGGING ARGUMENT
• The debugging argument contains all
important information collected througout a
request:

17. DATASOURCES

18. ALL DUMPS WITH TARGET DEBUG
• Great – this does not work ATM, I filed a ticket
that it is broken

19. ALL EXCEPTIONS (SILENT OR NOT)

20. HISTORY (CALLSTACK)
• The callstack tells us, in what order
(by ID) the templates have been
called
• This would allow us to display the
callstack

21. IMPLICIT ACCESS
• In this section you get all the
variables, that are called by
following the rules of scope
cascading. If you see none,
two reasons:
– Feature is disabled
– Your programming is impecable

22. PAGEPARTS
• This feature has been implemented for one of
the upcomin tools which will tell you the slow
parts in your application

23. PAGES

24. QUERIES

25. TIMERS
• Mostly used for testing
• If you don't want your output to be disturbed
by the timer output
• Generated by the tag CFTIMER

26. TRACES
• If you want to follow a variables state
througout the request, you can use the tag
CFTRACE
• It is kind of like a dump output="debug"

27. ANY IDEAS FOR IMPORVEMENTS
• Make the layout nicer
• Toggle sections
• Group items
• Show percentages and heat maps

28. ADDITIONAL IDEAS
• Callstack
• Session size information
• Filtering, either client or server side

29. SO HOW DO WE WRITE OUR OWN?
• Simple. Create a CFC
– Where?
• Server side:
– server-config-dir/context/context/admin/debug
• Webcontext side
– web-context-dir/context/admin/debug

30. SO HOW DO WE WRITE OUR OWN?
• Name the CFC individually so that it does not
get overwritten
• Add a body and one method like follows

31. SO HOW DO WE WRITE OUR OWN?
component extends="Debug" output="no"
fields=array(
group("Execution Time","Execution times for templates",3),
field("Min Exec Time","minimal","0",true,{_appendix:"micros",_bottom:"Exec time templates"},"text40"),
field("Highlight","highlight","250000",true,{_appendix:"micros",_bottom:"Highlight "},"text50"),
);
string function getLabel(){}
string function getDescription(){}
string function getid(){}
void function onBeforeUpdate(struct custom){ }
void function output(required struct custom, required struct debugging, string context="web") {
… here comes the output …
}
}

32. CFADMIN ACTION="SURVEILLANCE"
• This is a very interesting tag that allows you to
see what's going on on your server
• It also contains the debugging information
generated up to that time

33. LET'S HAVE A LOOK
• I am creating several calls and then do a
cfadmin action="surveillance"
• Let's inspect the code from there.

34. BTW• I am working on a debugging console again 