Andrew's ramblings

ColdFusion, Flex Builder and debugging

Tags: Flash, Coldfusion, Flex

While doing a project that is a mixture of Flex with some ColdFusion code, I was a little surprised to find that the line debugger in Flex is not worth that much. I mean the only time you can fire a break point, is if you have run the Flex Application from Flash Builder 4.

What this means is that if one was to design a Flex Application that can run stand alone, with some ColdFusion code. And you want to integrate this, or call this application from a full blown ColdFusion Application. You need to pass some variables across from the ColdFusion Application to the Flex Application, but as this is run from the browser then the Flex Application can never have break points for debugging.

I do consider this a very negative thing, but there is a work around.

Depending on your situation, mine was that I need to pass in certain parameters from the URL. And as I was trying to get the Flex Application to work, I was in the need of the line debugger only to find that it isn't as powerful as one might be used to when it comes to the likes of a .Net application.

Anyway the thing to do here is in Flash Builder 4, edit the run/debug properties of you Application and modify the section that you use to call the Flash Application with.

Now this might seem like a simple hack, or workaround as some might call it. I think this is something that should have been thought about, and as this is a version 4 release, I am extremely surprised to find that Flash Builder can't debug applications the are not run with in the IDE.

I seriously hope that the next release of Flash Builder, not only addresses the need to debug in a lot more cases than it does. but the introduction of ColdFusion and Flash in the same Application is given a lot more thought between the IDE's for working together as well.

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