owl/doc/tools/devtools_guide.md

Owl Devtools Guide

Information popup

After having installed the extension, a new icon will be added to your extension bar. If you don't see it, you can pin the extension using the extensions popup.

Clicking on the owl icon will open the information popup. This popup is useful to know in advance whether owl is loaded in the tab or not. This is also indicated by the icon itself: if it is flipped upside-down, it means that owl is not loaded in the active tab. Do note that old versions of owl are not supported by the extension and will therefore be indicated either as obsolete or absent by the extension popup.

First steps

When you are on a page where owl is detected, you can open your devtools either with right-click -> Inspect or using F12. In the devtools menu, you can search for the Owl tab which is added by the extension. It will be present by default at the end of the list but you can drag and drop it at the position you want for easier navigation in the future.

When you open the tab, you arrive on the Components view by default which is one of the two available tabs at the top. Here is an example of the devtools on the Odoo CRM app:

Components tab

The components tab is separated into two sub windows: the components tree in the left and the component details in the right. The components tree will display all the different components that are present in the tab in the form of a tree. The root of this tree is actually the app which is not a component but can still be inspected by the devtools like one. There can also be multiple apps loaded in the page like in the following:

There is a convenient search bar at the top of the components tree which will help finding the components tou want in the tree and also, an element picker can be used to directly select the component you want to focus on in the page which is especially useful when trying to find what you want. Just click on the elements picker icon and click on the element you want to focus on in the page and it will be selected in the devtools accordingly. Hovering any element in the page in this mode will highlight it and the same happens anytime in the components tree.

In the tree itself, the navigation is quite simple and is similar to the one in the Elements tab of the browser's devtools. It is possible to navigate with the keyboard using the arrow keys and multiple shortcuts are available in a custom menu when right-clicking on a component. This menu allows to expand/fold all the children nodes of a component, fold its direct children only, inspect the source code of the component, send it as a global variable in the console, go to the Elements tab and focus on its content, force a rerender of the component, send its observed states to the console as a global variable, inspect its compiled template in the Sources tab or send its raw template to the console.

The component details window in the right will show the component that is currently selected as well as its env, props, observed states and all the other variables that are present on its instance. While the props and the env are already present on the actual instance of the component and are pretty explicit by themselves, the observed state value is a bit more complicated to grasp.

The observed state is actually information about which variables are observed by the component which will trigger a rerender of the component when it is modified. The keys represent which part of the variable is actually observed and the target is the actual variable. For simplicity, the properties that are not observed by the component are greyed out while the others are in bold. This means that editing bold ones will trigger a rerender while the greyed out ones will not.

In the given example, we have two keys/target pairs for two different variables. The first one indicates that adding or removing an element to the array will trigger a rerender since the length will have changed. Replacing the element at index 0, 1 or 2 will also have the same effect as implied by the keys. It doesn't mean that editing the properties of element at index 0, 1 or 2 will rerender the component though. It may be the case for some but this will be described in another keys/target pair. The second keys/target pair is actually the element at index 0 of the first pair. It only has id in the keys meaning that only the id property will actually trigger a rerender the component when modified. Be aware however that the other properties may be in the observed state of another component like a child one in this case. A greyed out property only implies it is not reactive for the selected component and not for the others.

The navigation inside the properties is also similar to the one in console variables: properties have their prototype displayed and getters will get their value when clicked on (...). It is also possible to send any property to the console using the right-click context menu on it and functions can be inspected in the sources tab as well.

There are several icons available to perform several of the actions described before in the components tree context menu and all these actions are also available by opening the menu by right-clicking on the component's name. Using the left click on the component's name will focus it in the components tree.

It is also possible to edit any of the leaf node properties. To do so, you must double click on the property's value and modify it using the freshly created input then press enter to apply the changes. Do note that the modified values should be written in JSON format in order to be valid (examples: 89, "yes", undefined, null, ["hello", 15], {"a": 1}, true, ...). Whether it has an impact on the component or not and whether it produces an error is the responsability of the user.

Profiler

The profiler tab is the other tab of the owl devtools. It consists in an actions bar at the top and a tree/list of events related to the owl components' renders. Here is an example of the events launched when entering the Odoo Crm app.

In the initial state, no event is displayed. You need to activate the recording of events before they are intercepted by the devtools using the record button.

The second button is used to clear all the events that have been recorded. The select can be used to switch between the tree view (which shows the causality between renders) and the events log view which simply displays the events in the exact order they were triggered. In this view, you can expand the create, update and destroy events which reveals the component that initiated the event.

The third button is only visible in tree view and allows to fold all the render events that were recorded. Some actions are also available when using the right-click on any event of the tree view for navigation purpose in a similar fashion as in the components tree.

There is also the Trace Renderings and Trace Subscriptions features. These features are independant of the recording of events and have no effect on the profiler tab. The Trace Renderings option is used to log in the console all the render events and allows to show their traceback information. Similarly, the Trace Subscriptions option logs all the properties that caused a render event and also allows to see the traceback of the modification

Options

The owl devtools extension has a dark mode feature which defaults to your general devtools settings and can be toggled using the sun/moon icon at the top-right corner of the tab. All the examples above were created with the dark mode enabled. There is also a refresh button to completely reset the owl devtools.

Troubleshooting

If the feedback from the page to the devtools seems to be cut, just close the devtools and refresh the page. This will eventually happen any time a tab stays opened for too long without being refreshed.