I’ve come across an issue in my application where the subtract functionality is giving me the wrong result. Let’s use the nerd.vision debugger with the project on my computer to see what could be wrong.

What this article covers:

• Why you would use a local project in nerd.vision
• Loading a local project into the nerd.vision debugger
• Firing a breakpoint on this project
• Fixing the issue and seeing the corrected data

Why you would use a local project in nerd.vision

nerd.vision is great for debugging issues in applications that have been pushed to git, but what about when you’re developing on your machine? With the newly released Local code source, using nerd.vision while developing is super simple.

• Using nerd.vision with a local project lets you easily set breakpoints on your code without having to repeatedly commit it to git, all you have to do is refresh
• It also allows you to try out the debugger without connecting nerd.vision to Gitlab/GitHub/Bitbucket
• The code itself never leaves your computer, it’s loaded directly into your browser

‍

Loading a local project

1. First I’ll jump onto debugger.nerd.vision and hit the ‘Create new workspace’ button. From here, I can choose my code source to be ‘Local’

2. Now I’ll select the application by hitting the ‘Browse’ button and finding the root of my project. This then loads directly into the browser

3. After that I’ll Save, then I can see my project appear in the tree on the left

4. Now lets see the issue in my application: if I subtract two numbers, I’m getting the wrong result

5. My application already has the nerd.vision agent installed, so I’ll add a breakpoint in nerd.vision on the subtract route, and then try another subtraction to see what the data is

6. The input looks fine, but the result seems to be wrong, so the problem must be in the calculator.subtract function

It looks like the variables are being subtracted in reverse. Let’s fix that and try it again to see the new results.

7. We can hit the refresh button to reload the project in the browser to see the code changes

8. I’ll click on the disabled breakpoint to re-enable it, then I’ll try subtracting again

9. That’s what we expect! Our problem is now fixed and we can continue developing

Conclusion

Adding a local project to the nerd.vision debugger and seeing data from it was a simple task. Developing using the debugger removes the need to trawl through logs to find an issue, and gives you the exact data you need.