FirebugLoggerTarget Class

POSTED IN Actionscript, Flex | TAGS : firebuglogger, firebugloggertarget, lab49, tracetarget, utility July 13, 2010

Some of you might of seen my past post about the FirebugLogger class.  It was an easy way to have text show up in the Firebug console in Firefox and has proven itself quite useful.  However, since I’ve been using Parsley a lot lately I needed something new to show the output of Parsley in Firebug.  Parlsey uses the native Flex logging framework (like TraceTarget) when you specify it in the config.

What I’ve done is extend TraceTarget and include some code so that any output goes to Firebug.  Simple enough, but very useful when you don’t have to have your debugger always running to see the output.

package com.codemonkeycreative.utils
{
	import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

	import mx.formatters.DateFormatter;
	import mx.logging.ILogger;
	import mx.logging.LogEvent;
	import mx.logging.LogEventLevel;
	import mx.logging.targets.TraceTarget;

	public class FirebugLoggerTarget extends TraceTarget
	{
		private var _dateFormatter:DateFormatter = new DateFormatter();

		public function FirebugLoggerTarget()
		{
			super();
		}

		/**
		 * Overrides the main function of TraceTarget that gets triggered
		 * every time someone tries to log anything using a Logger
		 **/
		override public function logEvent(event:LogEvent):void
		{
			// send the event to be traced normally
			super.logEvent(event);
			// Find the level
			var levelType:String = getLevelString(event.level);
			var level:String = includeLevel?levelType.toUpperCase():'';

			// Date variables
			var date:String = "";
			var d:Date = new Date();

			// Format date
			if(includeDate)
			{
				this._dateFormatter.formatString = "MM/DD/YYYY";
				date = this._dateFormatter.format(d) + fieldSeparator;
			}

			// Format time
			if(includeTime)
			{
				this._dateFormatter.formatString = "J:N:SS.QQQ";
				date += '[' + this._dateFormatter.format(d) + ']' + fieldSeparator;
			}

			// Find the category
			var category:String = includeCategory ? ILogger(event.target).category + fieldSeparator : "";

            // Then output it in firebug
            if(ExternalInterface.available)
            {
				ExternalInterface.call("console."+levelType, date + level + category + event.message);
            }
		}

		/**
		 * Returns the string equivalend of the level enum.
		 * This is needed for firebug to understand the console output.
		 **/
		private function getLevelString(level:int):String
		{
     		switch(level)
			{
				case LogEventLevel.DEBUG:
					return 'debug';
					break;
				case LogEventLevel.INFO:
					return 'info';
					break;
				case LogEventLevel.WARN:
					return 'warn';
					break;
				case LogEventLevel.FATAL:
				case LogEventLevel.ERROR:
					return 'error';
					break;
				case LogEventLevel.ALL:
				default:
					return 'log';
					break;
			}
		}
	}
}

Simply create this class and include it in your project. Then in your config file, just add the following line.

<utils:FirebugLoggerTarget level="{LogEventLevel.ALL}" includeTime="true" includeDate="true" />

You just need to change the properties like you normally on TraceTarget and the class does the rest.