I’ve been a huuuge fan of firebug for sme time and longed for a version for flex. FlexSpy has been around for some time, and is really great, but it needed a bit more, especially in terms of invoking it. Currently it has this target button, but it’s a bit naff, and slow..

As such, I’ve taken some code I’ve posted about earlier, and some more code from the great Ralf Bokelberg – to create FlexBug.. it might be cheaky using this name, or indeed using the excellent flexspy code like this, but wtf afterall flexspy is released under the wtf license ;-) (check if u don’t believe me).

The new changes allow you to right click on the stage and it will list a child hierarchy – selecting any element opens that element up in flexspy – making it easier to identify ui components and also quicker (no more parsging tons of xml inside the swf).

I’ve also added FlexTrmp to this as well – which can allow you to execute rudimentary actionscript in real time.

The parser is shite – sorry, it’s just a spike that I’ve never had time to improve, but still – there’s basic code completion, object inspection and code snippets.

Further more – if you hold control while clicking on object’s that are in flexspy view (e.g. presentation models, or other classes) a variable will be created in the code console.

why?

The motivation is simple – I wanted a simple means of getting maximum use out of every build. I’ve worked on a cuple of projects now with huge build times, and I hated when something screwed up that stopped me verifying some functionality. Ok TDD theoreticaly prevents this, but we all know there are frequent exceptions to this, and moments when we wished we could hack about – especially when investigating defects, familiarising with new code or working on spike’s.

I hope you find this combination of flexspy and the ContextMenuItemProvider and FlexTramp helpful. I’ve also included the excellent IsDeveloperVersionChecker, also from Ralf – if you look at the downloaded rig project you will be able to see it’s use – check the compiler args for more info.

Please – no gripes about code etc.. as I said it was only a spike – if anyone seriously want’s to take this on and turn it into a proper open source project – well please let me know.

For working example visit:

for source code download this. flexbugalpha download !+

For more info on flextramp – see my flextramp blog post -it has syntax, etc..

please note – I’m doing this off dial up speed internet (damn bt so much) – my connection is so slow that I can’t really upload working example’s etc yet – you’ll have to trust me and download the zip.

once I got my broadband connection, I’ll upload proper examples and screenshots here..