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Developing and Debugging Extensions

When you have added an extension in Package Builder, you may develop and debug it for Spotfire Professional using the special Spotfire starter executable, while debugging it for Spotfire Web Player requires a different procedure.

Overview

The development procedures for Spotfire Professional and Spotfire Web Player differ slightly. The code must be signed in both cases, as must the Packages created by Package Builder, but Spotfire Web Player extensions require additional steps for debugging. This topic provides a special section on the prerequisites and procedures for Spotfire Web Player extensions debugging.

Signing the code

Spotfire extensions must be signed with a strong name key in order to be eligible. The Spotfire Extension Project Template contains a default key used to sign your project during debugging. It is however strongly recommended that you change this key before you build a Release version of your extension and deploy it on a Spotfire Server.

To change the default key:

1. In the Solution Explorer window, right-click your project and select Properties.
2. In the Signing tab, click the Choose a strong name key file drop-down box and either select <New…> or <Browse…> based on whether or not you have a key.

Debugging Spotfire Professional Extensions

The executable of your installed Spotfire version should NOT be used for debugging. Instead, open Project Properties in your Visual Studio® project, go to the Debug tab and set the debugging Start Action to the Spotfire.Dxp.exe executable in the Starter folder in the Spotfire SDK distribution.

Debugging Spotfire Web Player Extensions

(From TIBCO Spotfire 3.0)

Prerequisites

• The Spotfire Web Player must be installed locally.
• The Spotfire Web Player package must be deployed on the Spotfire Server.

Setting Up the Debug Environment

1. In Visual Studio®, create new project containing a Spotfire extension.
2. In Package Builder, add a project to as described in Adding Extensions to Configurations and choose TIBCO Spotfire Web Player as intended client.
3. In Package Builder, deploy the package to Spotfire Server.
4. Use the Web Player Upgrade Tool to download and install the package for the extension project.

Debugging the Extension

1. In Visual Studio, add a post build event that replaces the assembly that the Upgrade Tool has installed in the Web Player installation folder. Example:
   copy /y "$(TargetDir)$(TargetFileName)" "C:\Program Files (x86)\TIBCO\Spotfire Web Player\3.0\webroot\bin\Modules\MyExampleExtension_1.0"
2. Attach a debugger by calling System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch()  in your code.
3. Restart the IIS server to load the new assemblies after rebuilding the project in Visual Studio.