Flex Trace Panel 1.1

2004-06-03T17:58:34-02:00

UPDATE: Version 1.5b2 of the Trace Panel is available here!

I have updated the Flex Trace Panel to version 1.1 and added a Dumper class that makes tracing easier. The class provides several convenience methods to trace/dump messages out of your app into the panel.The download is available here.

UPDATE: I also coded a little helper app, that starts the Trace Panel "always-on-top" - more info here.

The archive consists of the updated panel as a standalone exe and the Dumper class file (inside the "src" folder). To make the Dumper class available to all your MXML applications extract it into the [YourInstallDir]\Flex\WEB-INF\flex\user_classes directory and leave the folder structure intact.

The Dumper class is a static class and provides five methods (four of them are just shortcuts actually) and three different log levels. The levels are 2 (or Dumper.INFO), 4 (Dumper.WARN) and 8 (Dumper.ERROR).

de.richinternet.utils.Dumper.dump(message:Object, level:Number):Void
takes the passed Object (any type) and routes it to the Flex Trace Panel, the 2nd paramter is optional and refers to the different log levels of the Dumper class (the default is Dumper.INFO)
de.richinternet.utils.Dumper.trace(message:Object):Void
takes the passed Object (any type) calls the Dump.dump() method with log level Dumper.INFO (2).
de.richinternet.utils.Dumper.info(message:Object):Void
takes the passed Object (any type) calls the Dump.dump() method with log level Dumper.INFO (2).
de.richinternet.utils.Dumper.warn(message:Object):Void
takes the passed Object (any type) calls the Dump.dump() method with log level Dumper.WARN (4).
de.richinternet.utils.Dumper.error(message:Object):Void
takes the passed Object (any type) calls the Dump.dump() method with log level Dumper.ERROR (8).

Here is a simple example on how use the Dumper class:

import de.richinternet.utils.Dumper;

  

  function traceTest() {

   Dumper.dump("a normal message");

   Dumper.info("also a normal message");

   Dumper.warn("oops, a warning message");

   Dumper.error("Houston we have a problem!");

   Dumper.dump("this is also an error!", Dumper.ERROR);

  }

Together with the updated Flex Trace Panel you are now able to filter the messages, if you select the "ERROR" radiobutton control for example only messages with a level of Dumper.WARN will be displayed. This is what it looks like if you run the above example with a filter setting of "ALL":

BTW: The filter does not work on the already displayes messages in the Panel but only on all future messages.

I also put an experimental method into the Dumper class called Dumper.setHook() that adds shortcut functions to the Application.application scope. After you called Dumper.setHook() the dump(), warn(), and error() functions are available directly in the application's main scope - the only thing you have to do is declaring the functions, otherwise the compiler will throw a warning.

Dirk.

Richinternet Blog

Flex Trace Panel 1.1