topic Re: Tips for debugging Arcade scripts in VSCode/Node.js in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Tips for debugging Arcade scripts in VSCode/Node.js

Bud — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:13:47 GMT

What are some tips/tricks for debugging Arcade scripts in VS Code/Node.js?
(assuming that the Arcade script is fairly vanilla -- as in, it doesn't use many Arcade-specific functions that need to be stripped-out)

For example, Arcade uses console(), whereas VS Code/Node.js uses console.log().

Solution:
In VS Code, put this line at the top of the script:
console = Object.assign(console.log, console);
That will assign console.log() to console(). Which means I can use the console() script in both programs -- without constantly doing "find and replace" on .log.
Note: Only use that line in VS Code; it won't work in Arcade (and isn't needed in Arcade).

Any other ideas?
(I'm a novice, so it's possible the console.log() thing is wonky...I'm just trying to learn, and not get too frustrated while I'm at it 🙂

Related: Idea: Arcade Extension for Visual Studio Code

Re: Tips for debugging Arcade scripts in VSCode/Node.js

jcarlson — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 14:36:48 GMT

Personally, I almost always keep one of these two things up in a tab:

The Arcade Playground
A "Test Space" dashboard pre-loaded with all sorts of datasets, widgets, and Data Expressions

As I work on a script in VSCode, I routinely copy it into one of these test spaces to get feedback. It's not perfect, but it works well enough.

Re: Tips for debugging Arcade scripts in VSCode/Node.js

Bud — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 18:05:12 GMT

By the way, the keyboard shortcut for auto-formatting code in VS Code is: Shift + Alt + F.

How do you format code in Visual Studio Code (VSCode)?