Smack includes two built-in debugging consoles that will let you track all XML traffic between the client and server. A lite debugger which is part of the smack.jar and an enhanced debugger contained in smackx-debug.jar.

Debugging mode can be enabled in two different ways:

1. Add the following line of code before creating new connections:

   XMPPConnection.DEBUG_ENABLED = true;

2. Set the Java system property smack.debugEnabled to true. The system property can be set on the command line such as:

   java -Dsmack.debugEnabled=true SomeApp

If you wish to explicitly disable debug mode in your application, including using the command-line parameter, add the following line to your application before opening new connections:

XMPPConnection.DEBUG_ENABLED = false;

Smack uses the following logic to decide the debugger console to use:

1. It will first try use the debugger class specified in the Java system property smack.debuggerClass. This is a good place if you want to hook your own debugger console. If you need to develop your own debugger all you need to do is implement the SmackDebugger interface and then set the system property on the command line such as:

   java -Dsmack.debuggerClass=my.company.com.MyDebugger SomeApp

2. If step 1 fails then the next option is to try to use the enhanced debugger. The file smackx-debug.jar contains the enhanced debugger. Therefore you will need to place the jar file in the classpath. For situations where space is an issue you may want to only deploy smack.jar in which case the enhanced debugger won't be available.

3. The last option if the previous two steps fail is to use the lite debugger. The lite debugger is a very good option for situations where you need to have low memory footprint.

Enhanced Debugger

• Connection tabs -- each tab shows debugging information related to the connection.
• Smack info tab -- shows information about Smack (e.g. Smack version, installed components, etc.).

• All Packets -- shows sent and received packets information parsed by Smack.
• Raw Sent Packets -- raw XML traffic generated by Smack and sent to the server.
• Raw Received Packets -- raw XML traffic sent by the server to the client.
• Ad-hoc message -- allows to send ad-hoc packets of any type.
• Information -- shows connection state and statistics.

Lite Debugger

• Client Traffic (red text) -- raw XML traffic generated by Smack and sent to the server.
• Server Traffic (blue text) -- raw XML traffic sent by the server to the client.
• Interpreted Packets (green text) -- shows XML packets from the server as parsed by Smack.