Exploring Seaside Tools

In this video we explore some of the tools in Seaside. One remarkable feature is the ability to debug a live web request. We start by introducing a misspelling in a method and observe the Message Not Understood error displayed by Seaside. Clicking on the 'Debug' link in the web browser brings up a Smalltalk debugger in which we can not only view the stack, but we can edit the source code. After we correct the error, we can proceed with processing the web request and see the correct page in the web browser.

Seaside also provides a number of web-based tools. When in development mode there is a toolbar at the bottom from which we can open a new tab showing the component surrounded by a "halo" of tools. One tool allows us to view the HTML source. Another allows us to create CSS that styles the component. Another allows us to inspect the component and execute arbitrary Smalltalk code from the web. This code can interact with the component and we can see the results immediately. Finally, there is a source code browser that allows us to edit existing methods and add new methods to our component class. As we edit code, we can use the other web tab to view the results.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Seaside
• Smalltalk
• Web

[ikemstar]

Really interesting. Under what scenario would you debug in the browser vs the image? It's an interesting workflow

[JamesGFoster]

@ikemstar You would probably use the image for most local coding and debugging but the web browser provides an alternative for some situations. For example, if you were running the image on a remote virtual server (e.g., a production application on Slicehost), the overhead of logging onto the server and getting a GUI interface might be excessive (and your server might be a text-only Linux system with no X Window System available). In that case having the GUI managed by the web is much better.

[sidkshatriya]

Great video! I am interested in seeing debugging (break, step in the code etc) within the browser and not within the x-windows tools. Is that possible?