Universal Adobe Debugger

Debugger tool for Adobe Launch, AEP and Adobe Analytics.

Table of Contents

• Purpose
• Scope
• Plan
• Contributions
• Special Thanks
• License

Purpose

The purpose can be divided in a few segments, sorted by importance desc:

• Make it faster for Adobe Analytics implementation engineers and analysts to debug the front-end part of Adobe Analytics, AEP or Adobe Launch. Ideally, as fast as possible while still keeping it universal.
• Make it more comfortable to consume the debugging data.
• Make it possible for a larger analytics community to contribute to open source debugging tools not associated with any corp.
• Make it easier for associated third parties like front-end developers and QAs to see the live analytics data.

Scope

This extension essentially has four parts accomplishing different facets of AA/Launch debugging:

• Essential info Popup. Make it easier and faster to get essential information about the Launch library and primitive highlighting of essential concerns:

  

• Console logging. Completely reimplement and improve what the AA Debugger extension does, fixing its bugs and ui, adding more configuration options:

  

• Library Replacement. Reimplement the Switch extension, essentially, but simpler and working properly. Simple logic to redirect the launch library fetch to a custom library.

• • AEP Debugging. The Web SDK debugging is just an MVP for now, essentially pretty-printing the xdm object sent.

Plan

The dev plan and event log:

• Add logic to parse POST b/ss requests too
• Finish the Hierarchies parsing and logging
• Finish the Product string parsing and reporting
• Adjust colors in the console logging to work well in the light console
• Add a settings and info tabs to the popup
• Add settings to change the default behavior of the main console log to be collapsed
• Deploy a test launch property with AA tracking for advanced testing
• Get some help from designers on the favicon, popup ui and logging
• Initial release to the Chrome web store v0.87 - first release: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adobe-launch-debugger/ehadnibhemgjphdjgkallndphbghlpkn
• Wrong DL is checked sometimes for the last event info (GTM's DL instead of DM)
• Add logging for the Site Section near the PV info
• Implement server call counting in logging
• Release the v0.88
• When DL found, clicking on the DL cell will neatly print it to the console.
• When last event in DL found, clicking on the its cell will neatly print it to the console.
• Empty product fields are reported as Undefined when they're not defined. Replace it with a less generic message or just an empty string to avoid confusion for when "undefined" is the actual value of it
• A pageview is misfiring on adobe launch site. When there's no page/link name in a call, make it clear.
• Implement logging for failed server calls. Maybe an SSL error is a good one to simulate.
• Release the v0.90
• Formatting improvements in Settings.
• Simplest Launch library detection logic (from DOM only, whatever has /launch-.*8.js) (MVP)
• Redirections settings/error reporting logic.
• Redirections management tab and logic.
• SetDebug's default state is not taken into account.
• Less bold text in ui.
• Add an option to quickly kill current page's redirection from the Settings tab.
• Implement the actual library switching logic (redirects)
• Add a button to delete all redirects.
• Make sure redirects logic is synced and enabled automatically when user uses a different browser with the same account and extension sync is on.
• Add an option for redirects to be session-based. By default.
• Instead of reporting into an active tab, report into the one the listeners are deployed to.
• Deal properly with empty dataLayers found. (the extension throws)
• Release v0.95.
• Implement _satellite.setDebug() polling logic for when the lib is not loaded when the extension tries to set it.
• Deletion of all redirection rules must delete both dynamic and sync rules.
• Better date formatting.
• Add useful snippets to the extension. Basically window.onbeforeunload = ()=>false and one trust stuff maybe.
• Release v0.96.
• setDebug reimplementation. Now it works better.
• Release v0.97.
• Also detect /satelliteLib- libraries besides /launch-
• Context data logging: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/implementation/vars/page-vars/contextdata.html?lang=en Thanks to chip for suggesting it!
• Release v0.98.
• OT - Allow All and Deny All buttons.
• Web SDK/AEP MVP logging implementation.
• setDebug made more reliable.
• Slight UI adjustments.
• Update extension store/repo screenshots.
• Release v0.99.
• Raccooning!
• Release v1.00.
• Code refactory in the popup scripts.
• Add a feature to highlight merch events that aren't present in s.events. Why would Adobe do this? Feels like a bug.
• Merchandising variables logging improvements (", " delimiter instead of the pipe "|").
• Add reporting for s.zip, currency code, org id (mcorgid) and visitor id (mid).
• The "Other" reporting section is now collapsed by default due to the number of not-so-useful new dimensions added there.
• A bit more ui improvements.
• Release v1.01.
• Allow the user to set their own variables to be included in the header of the logging. Thanks Arun T for suggesting.
• Improve _satellite.setDebug(0) to work immediately rather than after a page reload.
• Small cosmetic improvements.
• Release v1.02.
• CSS improvements of the extension popup. Thanks Chip!
• Fix a bug in the new custom logging code.
• Add a line to indicate the end of the main logging group for easier reading.
• Release v1.03.
• Configure selective logging for the web SDK.
• Release v1.04.
• QOL Improvements for the custom web SDK logging.
• Allow the underscore in the field names.
• Small reporting improvements.
• Release v1.05.
• Replace the counter of PVs and links with AA calls and WebSDK calls
• Web SDK: Improve autodebugging: indicate when linkClicks will be treated as pageviews in AA due to the web fields set.
• Web SDK: Surface the Edge config ids for every request, make them visible just like AA Report Suites. To ease the debugging of multi-destinational tracking. First 5 characters should suffice.
• Web SDK: Improve the tracking of network errors when edge network requests fail.
• Web SDK: Refactor logging. Make it less confusing. No more nested groups.
• Web SDK: Change the default logging a bit to maybe try and expand the analytics object automatically.
• Web SDK: Add a setting to remove the essentially useless xdm fields that are rarely useful to look at. On by default.
• Web SDK: Improve the logging for non-object fields.
• Web SDK: Add logging for the data.__adobe object. Off by default in settings.
• Web SDK: Reinforce the custom logging field, allow people to use the xdm. reference in the list of params.
• Release v1.06 (Byanka's Web SDK improvements update)
• Consider adding support for other consent management systems, mostly TrustArc and Adobe's Evidon.
• Hesitant: Web SDK: Add a setting to limit the number of characters for the config id logging in the websdk tracking. 4 characters by default.
• Hesitant: Web SDK: Allow for custom Edge base path. It's /ee/ by default, but it can be customized, in which case the extension won't catch the network requests. (who uses a custom Edge base path?)
• Hesitant: Find an elegant way to inject a library rather than replace it. Should probably be one/domain. To avoid doing it globally. Maybe not... It's so rare that we would need it, just use Overrides for ad-hoc injections?

Contributions

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's code, ux/ui solutions or just advice. If you're inspired to do so, please contribute!

To install the extension in the unpacked state:

• Clone the repo
• Open your Chrome -> open chrome://extensions/ -> in the top right of the page, there's a Developer mode slider. Enable it
• In the extensions page, select the Load unpacked option. Load this repo's folder.
• Done, you've installed it

To test changes:

If it's a UI change in the extension-script.js, css files or main.html, just click the extension icon in the browser to reload its popup window and you'll see your changes

If it's a deeper change of the content-script.js or background.js or manifest, you'll have to reload the extension:

• Open the extensions page chrome://extensions/
• Click the reload CTA in the extension card near the enable/disable slider.

Special thanks

• To the #adobe-launch and #adobe-analytics channels of Measure Slack community for early testing and precious feedback from staff enterprise analytics experts.
• To the #javascript channel of Libera Chat community and especially to LJHarb in there for always being able to answer even most complex JS questions with kindness and patience.
• To the Chromium Extensions Google group and especially to wOxxOm there and on Stack Overflow for guiding me through most critical stages of extension development.

License

Mozilla Public License Version 2.0