Like everything, there is a disconnect between the real world and the world your customers would like to be in. Many Oracle B2C Service customers are using the Browser User Interface and are really happy with it. Some, for various reasons – whether they be technical, functional or political – are using the Agent Desktop and will continue to use it as long as they can. And for an Oracle Intelligent Advisor consultant, especially one who is given the task of implementing functionality that requires JavaScript Extensions, this can make life a challenge. The number one grumble is a common one – how can I get on with my debugging? Where’s my console?

The Agent Desktop, lest we forget, has an embedded browser in it, much like Oracle Policy Modeling. But Oracle Policy Modeling has a console for debugging JavaScript that sends your console.log() messages to you:

Agent Desktop does not. So I am always seeing developers and Oracle Intelligent Advisor consultants navigating through a long list of “alert()” messages instead of looking in the console that they don’t have. I am sure that it makes for a very vexatious time when working on debugging an extension. But the reality is they do not have to debug this way. It is very practical to add an external debugger window. Thankfully someone else has done a great job so you can just pick up the great work done here and use it.

So next time you debug with Agent Desktop, you can have your own debug console. Drop in the script library and you get yourself a debug console, ready to receive your console.log messages!

Do something simple like the jQuery getScript to pull it into your project. Be aware that if you keep it in the resources folder of your project it will load all the time, which you may not want, so this method allows you to also condition when it is loaded through and If statement.

$.getScript('someserver/console-log-div.js', function (data, textStatus) {} 

and you are ready to console.log() like a boss.