Kalen Gibbons

In a previous post I described a hack I used for debugging Flex applications on a remote server. Well, shorty after making that post I stumbled upon a much better way of doing this. Flex Builder actually has functionality built into it to allow remote debugging, you just need to know where to find it.

1. First, compile a debug version of your application and upload it to your remote server.
   
   
2. Second, go to the Run/Debug Settings panel by clicking Project >> Properties and selecting the Run/Debug Settings option from the list. There, you should see another list of launch configurations for your project. Most likely, you’ll only have one, which will match the name of your application. Select it and click on the “Edit…” button.
   
   
3. Next, find the “URL or path to launch” section and deselect the “Use defaults” checkbox. Within the first text input titled “Debug,” place the URL to your remote server. This URL can point to the SWF file or to an HTML page that loads the SWF, the debugger will connect either way.
   If you’re connecting to the SWF directly you may need to add ?debug=true to your querystring. If you are connecting to an HTML page – make sure it loads the debug version of your SWF and not the release build.
   
   
4. Finally, save your project properties and run the debugger as normal. You’ll see that the debugger will connect to the SWF file on your remote server and you can debug the same way you would locally, using breakpoints, expressions and everything else.
   
   
5. That’s it… enjoy!
   
   

Tags: debugging, Flex Builder

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Flex, How-To, Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.