Advanced iOS App Logging For Easier Desktop And Even In-App Debugging

Sometimes you need to go beyond the basic logging provided by NSLog statements when debugging your apps.

This is where more the more advanced logging utilities that I’m going to mention are very handy to have around.

The first tool I’m going to mention is NSLogger which provides advanced desktop and browser viewing of log information within a very usable interface.

Here’s a brief summary of what this tool provides taken from the Github page:

NSLogger is a high performance logging utility which displays traces emitted by client applications running on Mac OS X or iOS (iPhone OS). It replaces your usual NSLog()-based traces and provides powerful additions like display filtering, image and binary logging, traces buffering, timing information, etc.

And the feature list:

– View logs using the Mac OS X desktop viewer, accept connections from local network clients (using Bonjour) or remote clients connecting directly over the internet
– Online (application running and connected to NSLogger) and offline (saved logs) log viewing
– Buffer all traces in memory or in a file, send them over to viewer when a connection is acquired
– Secure logging (connections use SSL by default)
– Advanced log filtering options
– Save viewer logs to share them and/or review them later
– Export logs to text files
– Open raw buffered traces files that you brought back from client applications not directly connected to the log viewer

You can download NSLogger on Github here.

The second tool I’ll mention is iConsole. iConsole provides in app log viewing, and simple debugging features.

The iConsole is a simple, pluggable class to enable more useful in-app logging for your iPhone apps. It enables you to check error and crash logs within a built application without needing to connect to the Xcode debugger. It also allows non-technical beta testers of your applications to submit log information to you easily.

I haven’t had a chance to test iConsole out, but it sounds like a very handy library.

You can find the Github repository here with more details and installation info.

Two very handy open source projects to help in chasing those “impossible to find” bugs.

Source: Alex Curylo