[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Passing parameters to patron search in staff client

[Jason Etheridge]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Mark Gavillet
<mark.gavillet at ptfs-europe.com> wrote:
> I'm working on a couple of custom pieces of functionality, which when
> finished, we were hoping to submit back to the community.

Awesome.

> I hope you don't mind me asking another quick question. Is there a
> recommended way of debugging Evergreen? I'm finding it a bit difficult to
> track what is going on when I do something in the client.

It is a bit of a Frankenstein.

If you make a server/skin/custom.js from the custom.js.example file,
the console will get a lot more noisy with dump statements.  If using
a Windows staff client, you'll want to add -console to the target in
the shortcut that spawns the client.

> Ideally I'd like to be able to find out which xul files are being used to construct a tab,

Control+Shift+F7 will open a debug box for whichever interface has
focus, and you can eval stuff like location.href to see where you're
at.  The DOM inspector under Admin -> For Developers is also
invaluable.

For certain embedded interfaces in the client, you can click on the
faded Debug label in the upper right and get at the URL and the source
code.  Such interfaces can often be ran outside of the staff client by
pasting the URL into Firefox, though in general, the client pushes a
lot of stuff (data and callbacks, usually through a variable called
xulG) into an embedded window's scope, that the content can then make
use of.

> which OpenSRF methods are being called, and which parameters are being passed between screens.

For parameters between the screens, you can do the Control+Shift+F7
trick and inspect xulG, and/or look for any lingering URL query params
with location.href.

OpenSRF methods will show up in the console (with that custom.js
file), but you can also tail the osrfsys.log on the server and pipe
grep it for CALL:

Or the gateway.log, and grep it for ACT:

In the logs, when you see something like
[ACT:4984:./osrf_http_translator.c:293:1316693765498419], that last
number is a thread trace, which you can use to link a lot of things in
the logs together (though if you're the only one using a system, it's
not as important).

There's also a source debugger, which while not as nice as Firebug or
the Chrome dev tools, is functional.  Admin -> For Developers ->
Venkman

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com