To View and Debug MYOB Acumatica Source Code

MYOB Acumatica has open source code and you can easily view it with the Source Code browser. For details, see Source Code browser.

However, in some cases, for example, when you need to find a method to override, it is helpful to debug MYOB Acumatica source code with breakpoints and see which breakpoint is hit in which scenario. To be able to debug MYOB Acumatica code, you should configure your extension library in Visual Studio.

Before You Proceed

You can view and debug MYOB Acumatica source code inside an extension library. Before you start configuring your extension library in Visual Studio, create it. For details, see To Create an Extension Library.

To Configure the Extension Library

  1. Check whether the MYOB debugger tools are installed and remember their location.

    The MYOB debugger tools are PDB files located in the Bin folder of the MYOB Acumatica site folder.

    The PDB files are copied to the Acumatica ERP/Files/Bin folder during the installation process if the Install Debugger Tools option is selected. If you haven't selected this option during installation, you should remove MYOB Acumatica and install it again with the Install Debugger Tools option selected. For details, see To Install the MYOB Acumatica Tools.

    Every time you install or upgrade any MYOB Acumatica instance, the MYOB Acumatica ERP Configuration Wizard copies data from the Acumatica ERP/Files/Bin folder to replace instance files. These files are not copied to any instance automatically. But to be able to debug MYOB Acumatica, you must have them in every instance that you need to debug.

    So to distribute these PDB files, you can do one of the following:

    • Install a new instance
    • Upgrade an existing instance
    • Copy files manually from Acumatica ERP/Files/Bin
    Note:
    DLL and PDB files should be from the same version of MYOB Acumatica.
  2. Configure the web.config file of the instance by doing the following:
    1. In the file system, open in the text editor the web.config file that is located in the root folder of the your instance.
    2. In the <system.web> tag of the file, locate the <compilation> element.
    3. Set the debug attribute of the element to True, as shown in the following code. 
      <system.web>
 <compilation debug="True" ...>
    4. Save your changes.
    Note:
    Be careful with this option on production environment, as debug configuration can significantly slow down MYOB Acumatica performance.
  3. Configure the extension library by doing the following:
    1. In Visual Studio, open the extension library.
    2. In the main menu, select Tools > Options.
    3. In the Debugging > General section, clear the Enable Just My Code check box.
    4. In the Debugging > Symbols section, in the Symbols file (.pdb) locations list, add the path to the location of the PDB files which you discovered in instruction 1 of the step. For example,
      C:\Program Files\Acumatica ERP\Files\Bin
    5. Click OK.

To Browse and Debug the Source Code

After you have configured the extension library, you can view and debug source code of MYOB Acumatica. Do the following:

  1. Learn the full name of the graph in which the method you want to debug is located. It is shown in the Graph Name box of the Source Code Browser. For details, see To Explore the C# Code of a BLC.

    For example, suppose you want to debug the Release action of the Payments and Applications (AR302000) form. The full graph name is PX.Objects.AR.ARPaymentEntry.

  2. Open MYOB Acumatica source code files. All files are located in the <Site_folder>/App_Data/CodeRepository folder. The CodeRepository.csproj Visual Studio project file which contains references to all of the source code files, is provided in the same folder for easier navigation of the source code. Open the CodeRepository.csproj project file in Visual Studio.
  3. Navigate to the file with the code of the graph.

    For the Release action of the Payments and Applications form, the graph is located in PX.Objects/AR/ARPaymentEntry.cs.

  4. Add a breakpoint inside the method you want to debug.
  5. Attach the Visual Studio debugger to a running process.

    To do that, on the main menu, click Debug > Attach to Process, and in the Attach to Process dialog box, which opens, select the w3wp.exe process in the list of Available Processes.

    Note:
    In the dialog box, ensure that the Show processes from all users check box is selected. If the check box is cleared, the list will not display the w3wp.exe process record.
  6. In MYOB Acumatica, open a form on which the method being debugged is called and perform actions to hit the added breakpoint.

Other Tips on Debugging MYOB Acumatica Code

Besides action methods like the ARPaymentEntry.Release method, you can debug event handlers implemented for attributes (located in the PX.Data namespace) and {Get; Set;} methods of DAC properties.

For debugging MYOB Acumatica code, you can also use the following Visual Studio features: