Thursday

How To Debug Android Widgets

For most new android app developers (like me), it is a bit puzzling how to debug the android widgets or how to put a breakpoint in an android widget code. For normal applications, it is quite simple as when you press “debug” on the eclipse toolbar, it launches the emulator (or connects to existing emulator/device), syncs your application and launches its main activity and puts the control in your hands if you have put a breakpoint. For widgets, it seems a bit tricky because there is no activity to be launched, so eclipse just syncs your widget’s apk and installs it and that’s it. So, is it possible or not to debug widget code? and if yes, then is it very difficult? Fortunately, it is possible and very easy to do but just slightly less intuitive and I couldn’t find any information about it at Android developers website and learnt it by just fumbling around for a few minutes so thought of posting here for the benefit of other newbies like me.

So, all you need to debug your widget code is almost same as what you do for normal applications. Just follow the below steps:
1. Press “debug” on the eclipse menu (or “run” it doesn’t seem to matter)
2. Once the widget apk is sync’ed and installed onto your emulator/device, switch your eclipse workspace to DDMS mode. You can either do this by pressing the “DDMS” labeled button on your top right corner or if you can’t find it, then do it by going to “Window->Open Perspective->DDMS”.
3. Select the process name of your widget from the list of processes shown. By default, this list appears at top left of DDMS window. (See screenshot below). If you can’t see your widget’s process name in the list, it is possible that the widget is not added to the home screen yet. So, do so.
4. Press the green debug button above the process list (See screenshot below)
5. And that’s it. Now, if you had put a breakpoint in the code, do something that executes that piece of the code.