Flex/Flash: capture 'trace' in code?

Question

In Flash/Flex, is it possible to capture the result of 'trace' in code?

So, for example, if one part of the code calls trace("foo"), I'd like to automatically capture the string "foo" and pass it to some other function.

Edit: I'm not interested in trying to use trace instead of a proper logging framework… I want to write a plugin for FlexUnit, so when a test fails it can say something like: "Test blah failed. Here is the output: ... traced text ...".

Edit 2: I only want to capture the results of trace. Or, in other words, even though my code uses a proper logging framework, I want to handle gracefully code that's still using trace for logging.

Answer 1

If you want to write traces to a log, you can just use the Debug version of Flash Player and tell it to log traces.

Answer 2

As far as I know it's impossible to do it externally, google brings up no results. Have you considered creating a variable for the output and then adding that to the log, eg:

var outputtext = "text";

trace(outputtext);

// log outputtext here

Disregard if it isn't feasible, but I can't think of any other way.

However you can do it internally, if it's just for development purposes: http://broadcast.artificialcolors.com/index.php?c=1&more=1&pb=1&tb=1&title=logging_flash_trace_output_to_a_text_fil

Answer 3

I have a Debug.write method that sends the passed messages over a LocalConnection which I use that instead of trace. My requirement is to be able to capture the debug statements even when the SWF is running out of the authoring environment, but you can use this method to capture the trace messages.

Answer 4

As far as I understood you don't want to use logging, which is of course the right way to do it.

So, you can simply create a Static class with method trace, and call this method from anywhere in the application, that's how you will get all traces to one place, then could do what ever you want with the trace string before printing it to console.

Another way is to create bubbling trace event and dispatch it whenever you want to trace message, then add listener to STAGE for it and catch all events... Hope its help

Answer 5

I would suggest looking through the source for the swiz framework. They use the flex internal logLogger app-wide and use best practices in a good majority of their code.