Validate Web SDK implementations with Experience Platform Debugger

Learn how to validate your Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK implementation with Adobe Experience Platform Debugger.

The Experience Platform Debugger is an extension available for Chrome and Firefox browsers, which helps you see the Adobe technology implemented in your web pages. Download the version for your preferred browser:

• Firefox extension
• Chrome extension

If you have never used the debugger before, you might want to watch this five-minute overview video:

In this lesson, you use the Adobe Experience Platform Debugger extension to replace the tag property hardcoded on the Luma demo site with your own property.

This technique is called environment switching and will be helpful later, when you work with tags on your own website. It allows you to to load your production website in your browser, but with your development tags library. This ability enables you to confidently make and validate tags changes independently from your regular code releases. After all, this separation of marketing tag releases from your regular code releases is one of the main reasons customers use tags in the first place!

Learning objectives

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to use the debugger to:

• Load an alternate tag library
• Validate the client-side XDM event is capturing and sending data as expected to Platform Edge Network
• Enable Edge Trace to view server-side requests sent by Platform Edge Network

Prerequisites

You are familiar with Data Collection tags and the Luma demo site and have completed the previous lessons in the tutorial:

• Configure an XDM schema
• Configure an identity namespace
• Configure a datastream
• Web SDK extension installed in the tag property
• Create data elements
• Create identities
• Create tag rules

Load alternate tag libraries with Debugger

The Experience Platform Debugger has a cool feature that allows you to replace an existing tag library with a different one. This technique is useful for validation and allows us to skip many implementation steps in this tutorial.

1. Make sure you have the Luma demo website open and select the Experience Platform Debugger extension icon

2. The Debugger will open and show some details of the hardcoded implementation (you may need to reload the Luma site after opening the Debugger)

3. Confirm that the Debugger is “Connected to Luma” as pictured below and then select the “lock” icon to lock the Debugger to the Luma site.

4. Select the Sign In button and sign into Adobe Experience Cloud using your Adobe Id.

5. Now, go to Experience Platform Tags in the left navigation

   

6. Select the Configuration tab

7. To the right of where it shows you the Page Embed Codes, open the Actions dropdown, and select Replace

   

8. Since you are authenticated, the Debugger is going to pull in your available tag properties and environments. Select your property

9. Select your Development environment

10. Select the Apply button

    

11. The Luma website will now reload with your own tag property.

    

As you continue the tutorial, you use this technique of mapping the Luma site to your own tag property to validate your Platform Web SDK implementation. When using tags on your own website, you can use this same technique to validate development tag libraries on your production website.

Validate client-side network requests with Experience Platform Debugger

You can use the Debugger to validate client-side beacons triggered from your Platform Web SDK implementation to view the data sent to Platform Edge Network:

1. Go to Summary in the left navigation, to see the details of your tag property

   

2. Now, go to Experience Platform Web SDK in the left navigation to see the Network Requests

3. Open the events row

   

4. Note how you can see the web.webpagedetails.pageView event type you specified in your Update variable action, and other, out-of-the-box variables adhering to the AEP Web SDK ExperienceEvent field group

   

5. Scroll down to the web object, select to open it and inspect the webPageDetails.name, webPageDetails.server, and webPageDetails.siteSection. They should match the corresponding digitalData data layer variables on the homepage

You can also validate the Identity Map details:

1. Log in to the Luma site using the credentials test@adobe.com/test

2. Return to the Luma homepage

3. Open the Experience Platform Web SDK section in the left navigation

   

4. Select the events row to open details in a pop-up

   

5. Search for the identityMap within the pop-up. Here you should see lumaCrmId with three keys of authenticatedState, id, and primary:
   

Validate client-side requests with browser dev tools

These types of request details are also visible in the browser’s web developer tools Network tab (assuming the website is loading your tag library).

1. Open the browser’s web developer tools Network tab and reload the page. Filter for calls with /ee to locate the call, select it, and then look in the Headers tab, and Payload tab

   

2. Go to the Response tab and note how the ECID value is included in the response.

   

   NOTE

   The ECID value is visible in the network response. It is not included in the identityMap portion of the network request, nor is it stored in this format in a cookie.

Validate server-side network requests with Experience Platform Debugger

As you learned in the Configure a datastream lesson, Platform Web SDK first sends data from your digital property to Platform Edge Network. Then, Platform Edge Network makes additional server-side requests to the corresponding services enabled in your datastream. You can validate the server-side requests made by Platform Edge Network by using Edge Trace in the Debugger.

Enable Edge Trace

To enable Edge Trace:

1. In the left navigation of Experience Platform Debugger select Logs

2. Select the Edge tab, and select Connect

   

3. It is empty for now

   

4. Refresh the Luma home page and check Experience Platform Debugger again, to see data come through.

   

At this point, you are not able to view any Platform Edge Network requests going to Adobe applications because you have not enabled any in the datastream. In future lessons, you use Edge Trace to view the outgoing server-side requests to Adobe applications and event forwarding. But first, learn about another tool to validate server-side requests made by Platform Edge Network—Adobe Experience Platform Assurance!

Next: Validate with Assurance