Debugging ASP apps in Interdev.

" What ? a technical post ",
yeahh i decided to start with posting some technical solutions to problems which we developers face in our day 2 day life..

Most of us work on VS 6.0 & Visual Interdev and are not aware that we can debug the Visual Interdev solutions / ASP apps just as we debug the normal VB apps. To enable Visual Interdev to debug below go thro the steps given below.

1. First Install a Working copy of Visual Interdev 6.0.

2. Next we need to install the Back Office components. These are typically present in the 5th CD of the Visual Studio 6.0 set.Insert this Cd and then select Launch Backoffice Installation Wizard after that select the following components to install.a. Remote Machine Debuggingb. Frontpage Server Extensions.(imp. these are the 2 apps which are needed for debugging ASP apps.)Complete the Backoffice Installation.

3. Next give a breakpoint in one of your ASP page and run your Visual Interdev solution.

• The first time you run it there would be a message box which says. "This Project is not set up to enable ASP Debugging. Would you like to enable ASP Debugging on this Project ?" Select Yes on this message box (cos we need ASP pages to be debugged).
  
• Now if you get another message box which says. "Unable to set server into Correct Debugging state automatically..." Select Yes over here also.
  
• Now browse to the page where you have set up the breakpoint and the Visual Interdev app will go in the Debugging mode and you will be able to look into variable values, Immediate window etc.
  
• If after the c. step you are still unable to debug the ASP application then stop the Interdev app perform the following steps.
  
  a. Go To Control Panel --> Administration --> Internet Services Manager / Internet Information Service / IIS.
  b. Here go to your Virutal Directory and right-click --> Properties.
  c. Click on the Configuration button which is in the Directory tab. Select the Debuggin Tab in the Application Configuration window.
  d. Check the boxes 'Enable ASP server-side script debugging' and 'Enable ASP client-side script debugging'
  Run the Interdev application and you will be able to debug it now.

(imp. You will also need to enter the Administrators / Logged In Users password while running the Interdev app. So enter the correct password.)

This was it about Debugging the ASP scripts in Visual Interdev.

We can also similarly debug the Client-Side vb/javascript code in the ASP/HTML pages.

While running the ASP page in IE Webbrowser click on the menu View --> Script Debugger --> Open.
This will open the Script Debugger in Interdev after which you can debug your client code.
If you want to debug after say clicking on the Submit button then select View --> Script Debugger --> Break at Next Statement.
This will open the code at the onclick event of the Submit button.

This was a very brief overview about debugging the Interdev apps.

If you are still unable to make Debugging work youcan find the MSDN article at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvid/html/msdn_videbugging.asp