source: trunk/docs/services/debug.txt @ 629

.. _services-debug:

How To Debug ZOO Services
=========================

:Authors: Luca Delucchi
:Last Updated: $Date: 2015-02-09 15:26:31 +0000 (Mon, 09 Feb 2015) $

There are different ways to debug your services, the most used solutions are via web
or via command line.

Web
----

Using the web request you can see any problem in the log file of Apache.

On Unix system the log file is usually in ``/var/log/apache2`` and the relevant file
is ``error_log``. A simple way to read the file is to use the ``tail`` command,
it permits to see the update of the file for each request ::

  tail -f /var/log/apache2/error_log

If the log is not clear enough you can add some more debug information to your code. You have to write
to standard error.

Python
********
Using Python, you can for example do this

.. code-block:: python

  import sys
  
  #add this line when you want see an own message
  sys.stderr.write("My message")

.. _web_javascript:

Javascript
************

You can user ``alert`` to print a string to standard error:

.. code-block:: javascript

  // add this line when you want see an own message
  alert('My message')
  // you can debug value of inputs, outputs or conf
  alert(inputs["S"]["value"])

.. note:: If you try to pass an object it will only return ``[object Object]``

Command line
--------------

It is possible to use the ZOO kernel ``zoo_loader.cgi`` also from command line.
This is really useful to debug in a deeper way your service:

.. code-block:: bash

  # in order to use it you have to copy test_service.py and HelloPy.zcfg from
  # the example services
  ./zoo_loader.cgi "service=wps&version=1.0.0&request=execute&identifier=HelloPy&datainputs=a=your name&responsedocument=Result"

Working this way you can use the standard debug system of the actual programming language used
to develop your service.

GDB
*****
From command line you can use also the command line tool `GDB <http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/>`_
to debug ``zoo_loader.cgi``, you have to run:

.. code-block:: bash

  # launch zoo_loader.cgi from gdb
  gdb zoo_loader.cgi
  # now run your request
  run "service=wps&version=1.0.0&request=execute&identifier=HelloPy&datainputs=a=your name&responsedocument=Result"

At this point you can ask help at the `ZOO mailing list <http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/zoo-discuss>`_
copying the result of the command.

Python
**********
For Python, you can use ``pdb``, more info at http://docs.python.org/2/library/pdb.html

.. code-block:: python

  import pdb
  
  # add this line when you want investigate your code in more detail
  pdb.set_trace()

Javascript
************

You can use ``alert`` also to print in the console, more info in the :ref:`web_javascript` web section