The following tools we will discuss today should give you some great options when it comes to debugging objects in ServiceNow.
The first option we need to discuss is the “Xplore” (version 3.5 currently) utility by James Neale. If you are not using this Developer tool then you should get this must-have utility immediately. If you ever wondered what was in a GlideRecord (or most any other object), or wished the “Background Scripts” tool had a better interface then this should be your go-to utility. There are a number of additional capabilities that this tool offers but this is my favorite.
Of course there are other ways to pull info on objects, but the interface on this utility is extremely intuitive and makes dissecting objects on the server side very easy. You can find this utility on ServiceNow’s Share site, or on GitHub.
One other tip that I discovered is that once’s its installed its possible to utilize its “xplore” function to parse objects to the log as well (handy when trying to debug objects on the fly and dump to the system logs):
var xplore = new snd_xplore(object); gs.print(xplore);
Note that the “xplore” function name is subject to change as they release newer versions.
So now that we’ve covered Xplore, on to other tools that should be in your toolbox for object exploration. These are needed if you are not going to use the Xplore utililty and need to troubleshoot realtime communication and logging the output from within your own scripts. Here are the other one’s I’ve used:
Other Server Side Tools
There is a cool Script Include that is included OOB in ServiceNow called “JSUtil”. If you haven’t used/seen it previously, take the time to check it out; there are some great functions including one called describeObject that can be used to parse basic objects:
JSUtil.describeObject(object)
Note that the JSUtil is not available/callable from within scoped applications.
Another option is to try outputting your (JSON compliant) object using the built-in JSON Script Include. This tool is great for “stringifying” data to make it readable on the server side:
gs.log(global.JSON().encode(object))
Ok, so you’re covered on the Server side of things, but what about the Client?
Below are some Client Side Tools that allow you to debug objects in on the client/browser:
JSON().stringify(object)
If you are not using objects as properties in your object you may be able to use the JSON methods: JSON.stringify() on the client side, or JSON.encode() on the Server side. But again, that won’t work if the object uses functions or other properties which aren’t serializable to JSON.
One final Method is to use a simple loop; note that this ignores the Prototype inherited properties by using the “hasOwnProperty” check:
for (var key in obj) { if (Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(obj, key)) { var val = obj[key]; // use val }}
A final tool you can use if you are in a browser like Chrome is DevTools. You can easily utilize “console.log(objectName)” in the Console (to open this just right click on a blank area of the page and choose “inspect) browser to then click through an object. Below is a screenshot showing how this can be done, I have used the “g_form” object as an example, and then started clicking through its keys/properties:
One thing to note, if you are doing this within the “Full Frame set” (includes the navigation bar), then you will need to select the “gsft_main(tableName.do), frame before you can start debugging. Alternatively just open your form in a new window that doesn’t have the navigation/top panel (control click on the link):
If you are not using Chrome (I’m sorry :)), you can always use something like the Firefox (Firebug) to do the same thing.
Have I missed any other common tools/methods? Please let me know!