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View Debug Statements Remotely from an ASP.NET application
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Rating: 8 user(s) have rated this article
Posted by: Malcolm Sheridan,
on 6/24/2009,
in category "ASP.NET 2.0 & 3.5"
Views: this article has been read 10711 times
Abstract: The following article demonstrates how to remotely view debug statements from an ASP.NET application using DebugView from Sysinternals.
View Debug Statements Remotely from an ASP.NET application
I recently did an article on how to use the System.Diagnostics.ConditionalAttribute class in conjunction with Conditional Compilation Symbols in ASP.NET - Compiling Conditional Code into ASP.NET Websites. I thought a good follow up article would be how to utilise Microsoft’s Sysinternals DebugView application to remotely view debug statements from an ASP.NET application. DebugView is an application that lets you monitor debug output on your local computer or any other computer that you can reach via TCP/IP. DebugView can be downloaded from here. No installation is required. Just run the executable.
One class that I use frequently when developing ASP.NET applications is the System.Diagnostics. Debug class. This class provides methods and properties that can help debug your code. One method in the Debug class is WriteLine. WriteLine writes a specified message following by a line terminator to the debugger. You would normally see this information inside of Visual Studio by using the Output Window under View > Output in the menu:
The output window displays the debug statements which is handy when you’re debugging your code. But this window is only available when you’re using Visual Studio. Capturing this information on a remote ASP.NET application is possible by using DebugView to view the debug statements.
To begin with open Visual Studio 2008 and choose File > New > Web > ASP.NET Web Application.
By default Visual Studio creates a Default.aspx file. Open the code behind and add the following code to the page load event:
C#
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Debug.WriteLine("This is only debug code " + DateTime.Now.ToString());
}
VB.NET
Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Debug.WriteLine("This is only debug code " & DateTime.Now.ToString())
End Sub
The Debug.WriteLine method will output debug statements which can be displayed by using DebugView. You should use this method in your code whenever you need to check a value in your code, or perhaps a piece of functionality that is vital to the entire application. Now to the fun part! To begin with open DebugView. From the menu choose Options > Always on Top. This ensures that when the website is running you’ll always be able to see the debug statements. The last thing left to do is run the project. In DebugView you’ll see the debug statements being output from the website:
For this example I am running the ASP.NET application locally. But this will work if you connect to a remote ASP.NET application via TCP/IP, which makes this a great tool if you need to view debug information from a remote website. This code can also be used to view debug statements from a Silverlight application. Pretty cool huh?!
Trying to figure out what your code is doing on a web server is sometimes tricky to say the least. But with the help of DebugView, you can view your debug statements and figure out more easily why your code isn’t working as expected.
The entire source code of this application can be downloaded from here.