Eclipse Plugin Troubleshooting

In general, problems with the plugin come in these varieties:

• The plugin can't figure out the correct "cfc path" for a file
• The plugin can't communicate with the RemoteFacade URL
• My tests load but either never finish or throw inexplicable errors with no stack trace

CFC Path

If you've read the Help documentation in the plugin and you still can't figure out how to get the plugin to correctly derive the CFC path for your components, then please follow these steps:

1. Close Eclipse
2. Open eclipse.ini in the eclipse install directory, and add "-debug" on a separate line, toward the top of the file. For example, it might look like this:
4. (Note the -debug on a line by itself)
5. Start Eclipse
6. Try running your test. This will now put a bunch of stuff into Eclipse's error log view
7. Open the Error Log View (window -- show view -- general -- Error Log)
8. You'll see a number of entries with an "i" (Information) Icon in the top few rows. Copy the contents of those rows and email them to the MXUnit google group with an explanation of what the plugin should be doing that it's not doing
9. Alternately, you can open the raw law and copy the appropriate lines which you'll find toward the bottom of the file. To get to the Eclipse error log: Help -- About Eclipse -- Installation Details -- View Error Log

After you do that, you can remove the -debug from your eclipse.ini file

RemoteFacade

• Ensure you can hit the URL in a browser. If not, there's your problem.
• If you can access the URL in a browser, but the plugin still can't talk to your URL, try opening that URL in Eclipse's internal browser
• If you're still getting "could not connect to facade URL" and can't figure it out, ensure that you don't have any onError stuff in your Application.cfc. Perhaps the errors are being swallowed?
• Try looking at the coldfusion error logs to see if anything in there sheds light on the problem

Using the RemoteFacadeTester.cfm

The RemoteFacadeTester.cfm is a great help in diagnosing problems, especially for removing the plugin from the equation so that you can follow normal ColdFusion debugging processes that you're used to.

Open a file named "RemoteFacadeTester.cfm" in the mxunit/samples directory. This file is included in the distribution. At the top of the file, you'll see this content:

Replace the variables with the component, function, and URL you're trying to invoke. Run that RemoteFacadeTester.cfm in your browser and inspect the output. Look at the CFDumps. It'll show you the result of running the test when run directly, when run through a testsuite, and when run through the RemoteFacade.cfc URL. All 3 results should be roughly the same. As an example, the last cfdump should look something like this:

If you're using this to test code that depends on setup in  your Application.cfc -- especially ORM-related functionality, then you'll need to copy this file into your application

My tests load but either never finish or throw inexplicable errors with no stack trace

Check the following:

1. If you're pointing to a custom RemoteFacade.cfc that lives in your project (because you need Application.cfc to run, for example),
   1. Something might be failing in Application.cfc itself. Use the RemoteFacadeTester described above for this
   2. Code in onRequestStart(), onRequest(), or onRequestEnd() might be causing errors or even swallowing errors
2. If every test throws the same error, check to see if something's erroring in your TestCase's "setUp()" or "tearDown()" functions. Also, check if you have "constructor" code running that could be causing errors
3. If you're extending a TestCase that isn't mxunit.framework.TestCase, but instead some other superclass that eventually extends mxunit.framework.TestCase, ensure that no weird errors are occurring in your superclass tests
4. If you're testing ORM functionality, ensure that no errors are being thrown at the end of the request. This can happen when ORM flushes at request end, for example
5. Look at your ColdFusion error logs! Often CF will tell you exactly what the problem is, but sometimes it never makes its way back to the plugin

A note on debugging your tests

It's not uncommon for me to get asked about problems with the plugin that end up not being plugin-related at all. The first step to debugging your problems is to confirm to the best of your ability that the behavior you're experiencing is definitely related only to running the test from the plugin and not anywhere else. That means you have to do some legwork, son. Run your code in isolation. Run it in a web browser. Create a quicky .cfm page and run your code from in there. Or use the RemoteFacadeTester up above. 

If you're getting behavior in your code that you do not expect, then first seek to understand whether that behavior has anything at all to do with testing, or whether it's simply that there's a problem in your code. For example, if you have a test that executes some ORM functionality, and rows aren't being inserted in your test but they do in your standalone code example, ensure that the code is doing exactly the same thing in both situations.This common problem happens to all of us! I bring it up only because it is so common and can be quite frustrating to debug. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Again, we don't mind helping debug, at all! But we don't you to be slowed down for hours going down one path when in fact the answer was something else entirely. So, this is a kindly public service announcement.