New in version 1.2.2

If you didn’t catch the 1.2 update, you will not have discovered the new shorthand function which makes logging/tracing even simpler. Instead of trace, write otrace (works with the same arguments as the Olog.trace() method). Also check out the original blog post about version 1.2 for more about this goodie release.

Olog.traceDisplayList()

Version 1.2.2 introduces a safe and fast display list crawler, accessed via the function Olog.traceDisplayList(root, maxDepth, property). This is extremely handy if you need to debug UI issues. It will present a tree representation of the display list from the specified root object. Like so:

You can simply call it without arguments. In which case it will use Olog’s own stage as the root object and a maximum traverse depth of 10 levels down. Supply the root argument with another DisplayObjectContainer, to start from there instead. Altering the maxDepth argument lets you control the tradeoff between level of instrospection and speed. Of course, on a huge display list, a maxDepth of 200 might result in a script timeout/crash, but I trust you to decide what’s safe.

In addition, you can specify the string name of a property to include for each child. If the child has this property, it will be appended with its value after the class name in the resulting tree. For instance, specify “alpha” and you will see the value of the alpha property on all children like so: MyView.alpha = 1.

Automatic handling of uncaught exeptions

Flash player 10.1 (SDK 4.1) introduced a way to handle uncaught exeptions globally in a movie. Olog compiles safely with SDK 3.5 (the SWC is compiled with 3.5), but takes advantage of this feature if it is accessible.

Olog.addKeyBinding()

This neat little trick lets you bind a sequence of characters to the call of a function. Watch:

Olog.addKeyBinding( "list" , _traceDisplayList );
private function _traceDisplayList ():void
{
	Olog.traceDisplayList( this );
}

If you then, while the movie is running type the word “list”, Olog will call the function _traceDisplayList.

These two additions I’ve wanted to add for a long time and I finally got around to it. Having these tools at my disposal has made many a debug session considerably shorter.

Enjoy!

One week in the wild and three minor updates have passed and it’s time to give AILogger some new functionality and a few tweaks. If you’re tired of downloading new versions, you’ll be glad to know that I intend to to start piling the updates with slightly longer intervals from now on.

This time, we reach version 1.1.0 and here are the changes:

• New optional detailed logging via public var detailedLogging
• Option to turn log coloring off via public var coloring
• More robust handling of different message types
• More robust log coloring

Download version 1.1.0 here.

EDIT: Version 1.0.4 available

[1.0.4 - 5.6.2009]
- Better information output from logged events

[1.0.3 - 4.6.2009]
- Added ability to detect logged events
- Logged ErrorEvents are now displayed with event type

[1.0.2 - 2.6.2009]
- Fixed a bug where severity coloring was not applied to the last characted in a log line

Today I was convinced to share a piece of code that has been with me for many years. AILogger is a sophisticated text field on your stage to write stuff into when trying to debug a Flash application that’s online. It has several features lite automatic date/time stamping, severity coloring, repeat detection, password protection, line appending and keyboard scrolling. You can download and read more about it here.