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Mobile Web App Debugging – Socketbug

The technology behind Mobile Web Applications has been growing at a tremendous rate. Mobile Application Developers, while able to produce amazing applications, are limited by the native browsers own limited functionality. Basic features available on desktop browsers are completely absent from mobile browsers. The ability to view source code, debug javascript, or even execute a javascript command from a console are all tools developers have come to expect while developing websites. So why are these features lacking for mobile web application developers?

This is where Socketbug fills the gap! Socketbug is a Remote Debugging Utility built using Socket.IO. This means you can now use modern browsers ( both mobile and desktop ) to work together to allow you to remotely debug you mobile web applications.

The following text is taken from Socketbug website.

Socketbug is built on top of Node.js using Socket.IO (currently v0.7) as the main backend for communication. Socket.IO automatically determines what communication transport to use and enables your mobile application to send/receive messages from other connected devices.

To use Socketbug you will need to install the server code in a central location that will be accessible by all devices that will be sending or receiving data. This can be anything from your laptop/desktop, or a remote server. There are no Cross Domain issues to worry about so you do not have to have Socketbug installed on the same machine that your mobile application is installed on.

To make things easy, Socketbug also has a native console that was created for you to connect to your Socketbug Server. Once your server is installed you should literally just need to copy some javascript code into your Mobile Application, and then open up the Socketbug Console.

If you get stuck, there is a forum available. You can download it on Socketbug site.