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Everyone might be facing the same problem with debugging Tridion templates: How to debug Tridion Templates locally without connecting to the remote TcmTemplateDebugHost.exe

Is there way to debug Tridion templates locally?

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Yes, there is a way to debug tridion templates locally.

@Rob has provided a wonderful facility called the "TcmDebugger" which enables the ability to debug templates locally without connecting to a remote TcmTemplateDebugHost.exe.

What is TcmDebugger?

TcmDebugger is a .NET console application which runs the SDL Tridion Content Manager render/publishing engine in a local context.

This allows a developer to extensively debug .NET templates, .NET custom functionsources and .NET custom mediators on their local workstation.

SDL Tridion Content Manager .NET Templating Debugger

With this TCMDebugger, we can test the template in three engine types that is Debug, Debug Engine Server and Render engines

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  • This does mean you need to give the developer direct database access, by supplying your database username and password and opening the database firewall up to the developer directly. Not really good in terms of security, and I doubt it would be allowed by many customers, but nice attempt...
    – Bart Koopman
    Feb 4, 2014 at 14:52
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    @BartKoopman: Developer required database access with Read Only permission (which is one time setup and same username and password will be used across multiple developers). Now multiple developers can debug their templates at a time with no dependency on connecting to remote or having local installation or local admin rights or remote access.
    – Siva Charan
    Feb 4, 2014 at 15:26
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    @BartKoopman: Rather than giving a developer with remote user access, giving a developer database access with Read Only permission is more safe. :)
    – Siva Charan
    Feb 4, 2014 at 15:28
  • SDL Tridion Content Manager .NET Templating Debugger link is dead. Did the code get moved to another repo?
    – Chris Mills
    Jan 25, 2022 at 16:15
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To execute a template you need to run it on the server, as it needs to have a database connection to the CM database to pull in all the content plus consituent TBBs, plus access to all of the Tridion API to know what to do with this. As such it is not possible (at present) to execute a template (and thus also to debug them) locally without connecting to the server

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  • Yes it was. But Rob has given a provision to debug locally.
    – Siva Charan
    Feb 4, 2014 at 7:54
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    Haha - yes just saw your answer! That looks useful
    – Will Price
    Feb 4, 2014 at 9:11

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