How to setup debugging of content delivery when using .NET

Question

We have component template of type ASCX control which is generating code for creation of News Overview list. The code of this ASCX control will run on Content Delivery Side.

But on Content Delivery we don’t have Visual Studio installed. Because of that debugging of ASCX code is getting difficult.

Is there any way we can debug ASCX code?

All pages are published as .aspx to Content Delivery side.

We are using Tridion 2011 SP1

Answer 1

The other answer to this is to try and get your User Controls working without Tridion. You can do this by thinking about how your application is architected and applying some or all of the SOLID code principles. This usually results in easier to understand and more testable code.

Encapsulate the calls to the Tridion Content Delivery API in a service with an interface that you can swap out for a fake during your local development using a Dependency Injection container or simply a flag in your web.config or even the #if DEBUG compiler directives. This means your team can get things working quickly locally without needing Tridion. I like this because I personally don't find remote debugging particularly productive.

Use a Web Application type project instead of Website so you can have code behind and your code is pre-compiled instead of being inline (yuck) and not.

As previously pointed out, this is a Software Engineering problem, not a Tridion problem. It might seem like a lot of work initially, but it will probably save much more time in maintenance and debugging cost in the long run.

Answer 2

Its generic .net related question not Tridion

if you have access on machine, you must install Visual Studio remote debugger 2012 or Visual Studio 2010 depending upon your Visual studio version.

after that you can follow steps in following blog. or you can Google for further help on remote debugging.

Answer 3

Given the remote debugger is setup as mentioned by Raj Kumar in above post. You can debug Content Delivery website code with following steps:

1. Open your web project in Visual Studio on development PC
2. Right click on project properties
3. Go to Web tab on project properties window
4. Go to Servers section on the Web tab
5. Select External Host from the drop down
6. Make the Project URL field point to external web server where you running CD website
7. Start the project in debug mode and break into your code

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure latest website DLL is deployed to Content Delivery server
2. You have sufficient permissions to Content Delivery server
3. All Content Delivery DLL files are correct version
4. All Content Delivery JAR files are correct version