Debugging

As your scripts get more involved, you'll invariably find the need to debug them. Fortunately some simple techniques will ease the burden.

Pre-requisites

Figaro:Web

Ensure you've reviewed the Setup page, and that you're working with the web version of Figaro.

DevTools

If you've not used your browser's dev-tools before, watch this quick Google primer. It's not hard, you just need to be familiar with it.

Write > Run > Debug workflow

Write

I strongly recommend that you write your scripts in a text editor with syntax highlighting. Create a new file with a .js extension to work within.

Run

CTRL + A, CTRL-C to copy your script, right click your task to edit, and CTRL-V to paste. Then save and run the script.

Debug

Use DevTools to debug as required.

note

At times, if you find your script has failed spectacularly (such fun!), and hasn't cleaned up correctly, tasks may continue running in the background. So when things seem beyond odd, refresh your browser to ensure you're working with a clean slate.

Setting breakpoints

As Figaro uses dynamic scripts, you can't simply open the file in your browser's Development Tools interface. Instead we need to create a marker with which we can open the dynamic scripts. We do that with script comments. Let's use a script which cycles frequencies each time it's run.

Monitor frequencies

console.log("Cycle frequencies - Start");

const freqList = [7032000, 10114000, 14044000];

const lastFreqIndex = Storage.get("freqIndex");

const index = lastFreqIndex 
    ? (lastFreqIndex + 1) % freqList.length
    : 0;

Storage.set("freqIndex", index);

sendCat(`FA${freqList[index]};`, false);

Now open your browser's Developer Tools and make the console visible by either visiting the console tab, or enabling the gutter view.

Run the script, and look in the console output for our comment.

As per the image above, we can see our comment, with the source link on the: right VM342:4. By clicking on the source link, our script source will be loaded.

Now that your script is available in the debugger, you can set break-points and walk through your code.

Of course you could use the debugger command in your script, but I find that most inconvenient as your script will hit the breakpoint ON-EVERY-RUN. To me, the console approach is far more elegent.

note

Every time you update your script, the dynamic script location will change, and you'll need to click on your comment again to access it.

Congratulations

Like most software developers, you too can now spend more time debugging than writing code.