Thanks for your thoughtful response. I guess creating a true-to-form mock api would likely be a timesink when, as you said, you can just use a practice account to test against the live api.

Thanks again, i appreciate you taking the time to respond.

I think it depends on your app. For what I was doing it was just easier to work directly with the live api, and this is what most people do I guess, create Testaccounts and work with the live API. Facebook seems to have a Sandbox in their pipline if you check out the dev blog and the upcoming features.

If you are interested in doing standalone local testing, I would also checkout the ruby testing framework Facebook provides, it does full cylce of add user to app, interact with the app and remove everything again.

I appreciate your quick response to my questions.

As it is, I had to come back tonight to tell you I got Eclipse IDE working!

I had to upgrade my original IDE, Eclipse 3.3 to Eclipse 3.5, and that allowed me to debug a ‘remote HTTP session’.

As far as I know, the old version did not have that capability, and it was pointed out to me that the latest version had the option, Accept Remote Session (JIT).

Once I upgraded the IDE and enabled this remote session option, I was debugging my Facebook app.

As easy as that!

I’ve spent the last 4 months on and off trying to debug my Facebook app (FBML).

Note, I had no problem debugging my other Facebook app because it used iFrame.

Read a lot of documentation on the Net, but it was your article that got me pointing in the right direction!

Much thanks.

First from a practical standpoint, when developing a IFrame app I would not go over the facebook frame at all but try to run your app all locally once you got the fb_ params: Get a facebook session, store it in your php session and don’t go over the facebook frame anymore (your links within the app are http://www.mydomain.com/foo.php not apps.facebook.com/foo). So you could just circumvent the issue and treat the app as local.

That said I’m not sure I understand your setup, its working for me adding the debugging parameters to the callback canvas url. If debugging is working in your other php apps then it should defenetly working with facebook app too – for iframe and fbml apps.

You see in your access logs if the request from facebook is containing these, and if so the debugs should stop at breakpoints – in fact in Netbeans it stops *always” at the start of the php script – in Aptana you can disable this in Netbeans PHP 6.7 not.

>> What are you referring to when you say, ‘your request url’?
yes this is referring to the canvas callback url.
>> You don’t initiate a ‘bebug session’ within NetBeans?
Yes I do – In Netbeans Debug Menu or right-click the project and select debug. This will attach the xdebugger to the php process.

>> debugging key for xdebug stays the same”
In eclipse the debugging key changes everytime you start a xdebugger session in netbeans not as far as I experienced. I did not try if KEY=default works, if so cool

I will soon post something about iframe dev. and using the different integration points from facebook as I believe there is not so good documentation on those various aspects.

“7. In order to debug HTTP Sessions its important that you have the parameter XDEBUG_SESSION_START= (for Netbeans its XDEBUG_SESSION_START=netbeans-xdebug) in your request url. So this gets a bit tricky for facebook apps since facebook is calling the canvas url I think that cannot contain query params (I guess ..) . Anyway no need to try or think either there is a nice firefox plugin that does that for us.”

What are you referring to when you say, ‘your request url’?
Are you referring to the Canvas Callback URL that you have to enter in the Facebook App setup page back in your Facebook account?

You can only provide query parameters to the Canvas Callback URL anyway and not in the Canvas URL. I’m doing just that, and it is working perfectly.
Unfortunately, it’s not working when it comes to providing the XDEBUG_SESSION_START as parameters in the hope it will stop the execution of the Facebook app at a specified breakpoint.

“That’s it: Fire up a debugging session in your ide, add a breakpoint in your facebook app and try access your facebook app from facebook. You should end up in your local debugging session.”

When you mean, ‘fire up a debugging session in your ide’, you’re saying simply start up the ide (NetBeans in this case), place a breakpoint in some source code then leave the program alone??

You don’t initiate a ‘bebug session’ within NetBeans?? (ie. Hit the debug button on the toolbar.)

You instead just open up Firefox, log into your facebook account, and just before you invoke your facebook application, click on the Xdebug helper plugin on the status bar to provide the XDEBUG_SESSION_START=netbeans-xdebug.

The facebook app should start up and ’stop’ at the breakpoint in the running NetBeans application?

It’s just not happening for me. Xdebug I know is setup right because I can debug my other php code residing locally on my machine successfully — in both NetBeans and in Eclipse.

I’ve updated the Xdebug dll and I’ve been debugging successfully for over a year.

What I’m not getting is how the debugger can stop a Facebook application – a ’separate application’ running in a separate browser window?

Below is a reference to the Firefox plugin, Xdebug Helper, you speak of. It also was an interesting read in my efforts to get the ‘debugging of a Facebook application’ to freakin’ work. It mentions the use of a cookie to trip a breakpoint:
HTTP Debug Sessions:
http://www.xdebug.org/docs/remote#browser_session

Finally, what are you referring to when you say, “debugging key for xdebug stays the same”?
Is that, for example, the KEY=124962935150027 in the URL query parameters?

Should that not be, KEY=default, instead?

Would you suggest anything off hand that I should double-check?

I’m missing a detail somewhere.

Cheers.

Sorry about the delay, I’m just moving this blog to my new address: uebersoftware.com – will update the facebook links too.

To your question: I get the impression that the debuggers for php are generally not so stable in compare to java debuggers. I really had to do some trial and errors and the eclipse setup / with aptana and zend based did not work for me with respect to debugging. I sucessfully use netbeans. Besides stability another advantage to netbeans is that the debugging key for xdebug stays the same.