DocsForIt!

Configuration

We have been using the configuration and environment system of the framework already when creating a working environment for the CombineCss plugin.

At the very moment we will dive into the debugging facilities of the framework, why logging is important and how easy it is!

All configuration can be made and read everywhere, but it's important for bootstrap things to be done in the project's config.js.

Our's looks like this right now:

config.setValues({
    "combine_css": {
        "base_url": "http://localhost:8000/"
    }
});

Every feature of spludo can be figured (even with dependency injection for many of the core classes) by using the Config#setValues method. The method can be called as many times you want. If the key you want to set, was set before, you will overwrite the value.

If you know that somebody may do combine_css settings before, and you want to set only the base_url, this is how you can do that:

config.setPathValue(["combine_css", "base_url"], "http://localhost:8000/");

Debug-Level

One example is the logging. We can enable full logging like this:

config.setValues({
    "logging": {
        "level": 7
    }
});

Running the application again, will spam us with lots of information. Usually from the CombineCss class. To hide a specific class, you may use the following snippet:

config.setValues({
    "logging": {
        "level": 7,
        "hide_classes": [
            "CombineCss"
        ]
    }
});

Launching the application again now, will show nothing. This is because we have no special class left, which outputs log information.

Logging in the DocsManager class

Since we want to have good overview what our application does, we'll add some logging to our DocsManager.

You may have noticed the line:

DocsManager.prototype.logging_prefix = 'DocsManager';

in the DocsManager class file at lib/DocsManager.js. This is the value, which the hide_classes property of the logging configuration filters out. Using spaces here will break the filter.

Now open the lib/DocsManager.js

$ vim lib/DocsManager.js

and replace:

DocsManager.prototype.getSectionAsHtml = function(section_name) {
    var self = this;
    return function(cb) {

with:

DocsManager.prototype.getSectionAsHtml = function(section_name) {
    this.trace("getSectionAsHtml", arguments);
    var self = this;
    return function(cb) {

Relaunching the app and opening http://localhost:8000/docs/extending-the-docs-manager/ will output:

TRACE [DocsManager.getSectionAsHtml] { '0': 'extending-the-docs-manager' }

If we want to stop the DocsManager from telling us what it does in detail, we could lower the logging level to something below 6 (TRACE) or add "DocsManager" to the filter at logging hide_classes property.