Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide

Testing Server-Side Code

Your server-side code should be tested and debugged in isolation, by using your own server-side pages that you’ve set up for debugging purposes only—taking Flash and Flash Remoting completely out of the equation. You should be able to call your server-side methods from a basic page that contains calls to your remote methods using test data. By doing this, the server-side logic can be verified (and debugged, if necessary) in a much more logical and structured manner. One of the advantages of using Flash Remoting is that you can separate your business logic from your presentation logic. The server-side methods can be viewed as if they were modules in your overall application. Debugging modules individually can often be more productive than trying to look at the whole picture. Let’s look at some of the debugging tools available in the major server environments supported by Flash Remoting. This is not an exhaustive list, as you can use many different server-side development environments and each will have its own debugging tools.

Debugging in ColdFusion

ColdFusion MX allows debugging information to be displayed, including the following information:

• Execution times

• Database activity

• Exception information

• Variables (Application, CGI, Client, Cookie, Form, Request, Server, Session, and URL)

Debugging must be turned on from the ColdFusion Administrator, as shown in Figure 13-5. There are two modes of debugging: Classic and Dockable. The Classic mode of debugging simply ...