Glimpse – like Firebug on the Server-Side!

Glimpse is a NuGet package that gives you Firebug-like functionality, on the server-side. It makes things a lot easier when you’re debugging.

To add it, first bring up the Package Manager Console window, if you don’t see it you can get it from View > Other Windows. If you don’t have NuGet installed, get it from Microsoft here.

To add Glimpse to your current web-based project, type:

Install-Package Glimpse

That’s it. Glimpse will install and configure itself, get any dependancies and generally sort itself out. When it’s done, you’ll have an App_Readme folder (if you didn’t already), a packages.config and some changes to your web.config. If you do any URL re-writing and routing and have global rules, add an exception in for anything that starts /Glimpse.

 

Fire up your application and navigate to http://localhost/glimpse/config  (adjust for how you debug your website, but you get the idea). Wonder at the magic, then when you have, click “Turn Glimpse On”.

Now, go back to your homepage (or any page). At the bottom right should be an ominous-looking eye. Click it, for detailed, useful information about exactly what’s going on:

• Information about current Ajax calls
• environmental and machine information
• current config settings (including all AppSettings)
• server settings
• details about the current request
• session information

– all very helpful when debugging.

You can get more information about Glimpse (and other packages) from the NuGet gallery.