Tool: Output all NetSuite SuiteLet Inputs to Debug Application

This article is relevant if you are producing NetSuite SuiteLet development and you seek better tools to debug your application.

Background

Before I get started, I must say how delighted I get to work with a senior team of professionals. Sean, both a great friend and strong software architect and business analyst, produced the following code elements which were inspiration for me during one of my SuiteScript development efforts. I enhanced his code to bring this to you.

When developing NetSuite Suitelet applications, many times you need to inspect your environment to understand the data and information provided by users input. Sometimes, you need to see http headers. Most of the time, you need see the value of some variables that have been submitted by the user. The challenge is that the common practice to debug NetSuite SuiteScript applications is to periodically litter your software program with statements such as nlapiLogExecution(‘DEBUG’, ‘Value of variable x:’, x);  this can be time consuming and cause your software program to bloat.

Wouldn’t it be better if you could simply call a custom function that simply outputs the entire environment to your browser so it is easy to inspect? The following function and code fragment does just that:

Example NetSuite Suitelet Program to Debug Application

The following code segment is broken into three sections:

1. A variable to conveniently place at the top of your SuiteScript program
2. Illustration of the hook point in your main SuiteLet program
3. The custom function that will do the work to output all the known Suitelet inputs

Here are the program elements:

//place this constant at the top of your program
//change the following to true to output the environment
var CONST_DEBUG_OUTPUT = true;  //default is false during normal run-time operations

//the following function represents your SuiteLet program main entry point
function myCustomSuiteLet(request, response) {
	//we plug our function statement at the beginning of the program before any other HTML output

	if (CONST_DEBUG_OUTPUT) {
		//pass the request and response objects
		see_all_input(request, response)
		return;
	};

	//the rest of the script is your main business program
	//...
};

//the following function does the work to output to the environment in a clean fashion
function see_all_input(request, response) {

   // first collect header information
	var form_debug = nlapiCreateForm('DEBUG');
	var html_debug = '<hr />getAllHeaders()<br />';
	if (request.getAllHeaders().length > 0){
		var prms = request.getAllHeaders();
		for (var prm in prms){
			html_debug += prm + ':' + prms[prm] + '<br />';
		};
	};

	//then collect the input data
	html_debug += '<hr />getAllParameters()<br />';
	if (request.getAllParameters().length > 0){
		var prms = request.getAllParameters();
		for (var prm in prms){
			html_debug += prm + ':' + prms[prm] + '<br />';
		};
	};

	//now output to the browser
	with (	form_debug.addField('custpage_debug', 'inlinehtml', '' , null, null) ) {
		setDefaultValue(html_debug);
	};
	response.writePage( form_debug );
	return;
};

Enhance Your NetSuite Application

One of the major reasons we love working with NetSuite is the power of the customization platform. Always looking to improve productivity, this tip should help quickly inspect and debug your SuiteScript program. If you would like help developing your own custom applications, contact us.

Marty Zigman

Holding all three official certifications, Marty is regarded as the top NetSuite expert and leads a team of senior professionals at Prolecto Resources, Inc. He is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA and has held CTO roles. For over 30 years, Marty has produced leadership in ERP, CRM and eCommerce business systems. Contact Marty to set up a conversation.

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