Debugging

FintechOS Studio offers several options for debugging automation scripts from the development and testing environments.

Debugging Server

On development environments, a dedicated JavaScript debugging engine can load your server automation scripts and expose them client-side in a FintechOS Portal instance. This allows you to take advantage of your browser's developer tools to debug your server automation scripts just like you would with client scripts. For instance, you can:

• execute your code line-by-line
• pause the code execution with breakpoints
• monitor variable values or custom expressions with watch expressions

Debugging Server Prerequisites

• A user account with the Debugger Users security role (see Security Roles).
• The sys-workflowengine-useclearscript and sys-workflowengine-enable-debugging System Parameters must be set to 1. These enable the Microsoft ClearScript (ES6) JavaScript engine (instead of the default Jint JavaScript interpreter) and start the debugging server respectively.

Use the Debugging Server

1. Log in to a FintechOS Portal instance with a developer user account (see Debugging Server Prerequisites).
2. A debug button is displayed on the portal's dashboard. Click the Debug button.
   
   Alternatively, you can use the Ctrl+Alt+D or Command+Alt+D shortcut on Windows or MacOS operating systems respectively.
3. A list containing all server automation and all scripts executed in the status transition in a business workflow. Select the script(s) you wish to debug and click Start to initiate the debug session.
   
4. The Debug Session Configuration engine is now waiting for you to trigger the script execution.
   
5. Trigger the script:
   • For Event Triggered Automation Scripts, trigger the corresponding CRUD event in the database.
   • For On-Demand Automation Scripts and status transition custom scripts, trigger them via an API call, or from a client process (for instance, from a form driven flow or directly through the browser console) via the ebs.callActionByNameAsync function.
     
6. Click Get debug Url to retrieve the debug session URL.
7. Copy the debug session URL and paste it in your browser's address bar (we recommend Google Chrome), then press Enter to open the link in your browser's DevTools window.
   
8. The link initially opens a wrapper function for your script. Click the Resume Script Execution button in your browser's debugger.
   
9. Your script opens and its execution is paused at the start (a debugger instruction is inserted automatically at the beginning of your script).
   
10. Start debugging your code using your browser's developer tools.

Debugging Log

The Debugging Log generates log events and continues the code execution. If the code execution breaks due to a throwException or to an unexpected error, the information will be recorded in the log.

Use the log Server SDK function to generate custom log messages from code.

Logging Destinations

The FintechOS Platform platform can send logging information to the following destinations:

• System console
• Local file storage
• A Seq structured log server
• An Azure Application Insights service

For more information, see the Administration Guide.

Logging Context

In addition to the actual log events, you can track the context in which a log event occurred (machine name, portal profile, thread ID, etc.), as well as define your own custom log context properties via server-side scripting (see Custom Log Context Properties). If a default log context property is not protected, you can use the custom log context property functions to edit it.

By default, the following log context properties are recorded:

For instance, a typical log message may appear like this:

-[START]---------------------------------------
 Timestamp: 17/12/2021 02:10:15 PM
 Message: Record saved successfully.
 Severity: Information
 Exception: 
 Properties: { CorrelationId: "23cdb1f5-0529-4377-b200-399efb8bc32f", portal-profile: null, base-machine-name: "FTOSBUCLP385", application-name: "Platform", automationscript: "sample-script-log-api" }
-[END]---------------------------------------

Custom Log Context Properties

To set up your own custom log context properties use the following Server SDK functions:

Throw Exceptions

Break the automation script execution and display the message as specified within the throwException statement.

When the throwException method is called in an automation script, the passed error message is available to users.

Examples of how throwException can be used for debugging purposes:

throwException(serialize("test"));
throwException(serialize(result.TotalNetProfit));
throwException(serialize(context));
throwException(String(Topic[0].a_Topic));
throwException(JSON.stringify(result));
throwException(JSON.parse(result));

JavaScript Exceptions

When parsing invalid Xml in automation scripts, JavaScript Exceptions are caught by try catch in JavaScript:

try
        {
        // load invalid XML
        var doc = server.Xml.Load( '<a> ... <' );
}
catch(err)
        {
        // handle error
 }

Console Debugging

Server-side errors are displayed by the developer tools. During development and testing phases, developers are able to track errors raised on the server-side directly in the browser's Developer Tools.

Example browser developer tools to use for debugging automation scripts:

• JSON Parser
• Javascript beautifier

The error output displayed in the Console is particularly useful when raising issues. Include the error output in the issue description to provide a complete overview of the error and reduce the investigation time.

On development machines

For IISExpress, on the development machine, open an elevated Command Prompt and run the following command:

C:\work\EBSCore\current>SETX\ebs-development-mode 1

For IIS, make sure that you set the variable at the system level (not on the user level):

C:\work\EBSCore\current>SETX\ebs-development-mode 1 /m

On testing environments

To debug on testing environments, open the web.config file in a text editor and add the following section:

Copy

<appSettings>
     ...
    <add key="ebs-development-mode" value="1 "/>
</appSettings>