Debugging

There are two different motivations for reading the following lines. Either you tried to include the WebPlayer into you homepage and you did not get it working or you changed the sources and and did not get your version of the WebPlayer running as you expect.

The player is not running correctly on your webpage

Before starting to use the debugging feature read our documentation and try to get help in our forum. If that doesn't solve your problem you can use our test page to try out your configuration. Just input your intended parameters (autostart, random, etc.), your playlist source (e.g. http://www.example.org/myplaylist.xspf) and your preview image (if you have one).

If the player is working as you expect your configuration is correct. Thus there might be some failures in your webpage and the way how you embedded the WebPlayer. Have a look at our quickstart guide to find out if you did everything right.

If the WebPlayer on our test page shows the same faulty behavior like the WebPlayer on your homepage there might be a problem within your configuration. Normally the trace output should show up some messages like "Loading of file '../playlists/xspf_plylist.xspf' timed out. Starting 2. try." or "Controller stopped due to InputError.". These messages should give you a good hint what is going wrong.

You can even enable the WebPlayer on your web page to output those trace messages. Just enable the debug option as described in the quickstart guide (set debug to 'yes') and the supplied warning and error messages will be displayed as an alert box. To receive all messages (debug, info, warning and error) have a look at the next chapter about self compiled player.

If you need more details you can increase the verbosity of the trace output by changing the Error Output configuration on the left side. If that does not help you to solve your problem you must leave a detailed description of your problem (link to your "faulty" homepage and some words about what you expect to happen) in our forum.

Your self compiled player is not working as you expect

ActionScript programmers use the trace() method to output trace information. Our implementation of the trace() method either opens an alert box (if debug=yes) or calls one of several JavaScript functions (debug=functionCall). If you have choosen the second possibility (as we did in our test page) the implementation of that JavaScript functions decide where to display the trace message. On our test page those functions just fill the main part of the web page.

Which JavaScript function is called depends on the "severity" level of the trace output. You can choose the severity level by starting your trace message with one of the following strings which are defined in the class org.webminster.utils.Tracer:

Tracer.DEBUG

Calls JavaScript function function debug(...)

Use DEBUG if you want to trace some detailed information you need while your implementation. DEBUG traces should be removed/disabled before the WebPlayer is released.

Tracer.INFO

Calls JavaScript function function info(...)

Use INFO if you want to output some noteworthy informations concerning normal WebPlayer behavior (e.g. load status of file, change of internal state, etc.).

Tracer.WARN

Calls JavaScript function function warning(...)

Use WARN if you want to trace a message that indicates a problem. Problems traced using WARN should not detain the WebPlayer from working normally (e.g. load of file timed out, etc.).

Tracer.ERROR

Calls JavaScript function function error(...)

Use ERROR if you want to trace an error message. Errors discouraging the WebPlayer from working normally should be traced using ERROR.

Tracer.STEP

Calls JavaScript function function step(...)

Use STEP if you want to trace a user (not developer) relevant task done by the WebPlayer.

All above named JavaScript functions have the following signature:
function(sTraceText, sMethodName, sFileName, iLineOfFile)
On our test page all the information which is given by the parameters is displayed if you switch on "Display code details" within the Error Output configuration on the left side.