Power BI custom connector application logs not appearing

[arindamroy19]

I am building a PowerBI custom connector for Zoho with OAuth2 flow using the Power Query SDK for VSCode. I want to emit debug/trace statements from the connector, and am using the following -

logMessage3 = Diagnostics.Trace(TraceLevel.Warning, "TextValueFromNumber", "In Contents", true),

But, these logs don't appear in log files in the 'Power BI Desktop Store App\Traces' location. I only see PowerBI generic log statements. In Visual Studio Projects, there is a flag 'Show User Traces' - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/samples/trippin/8-diagnostics/readme

Is there something similar for VSCode SDK Projects?

[bgribaudo]

Hi @arindamroy19!

To get the SDK to output logs, set the -l / --logMashupEngineTraces option when calling PQTest run-test.

-l can be set to:

• User for just user traces to be output (e.g. traces you create using Diagnostics.Trace)
• Engine for just engine traces to be output
• All for both of the about categories of traces to be output

The specified traces will be written to a logfile whose location is given in the output of PQTest run-test in property TraceFileLocation.

For example, you could run something like the following, then look in the output produced for the TraceFileLocation:

PQTest.exe run-test --extension "SomeExtension.mez" --prettyPrint --queryFile .\SomeExtension.query.pq --logMashupEngineTraces User

[arindamroy19]

Thanks @bgribaudo. This seems to be for the PQTest utility. What about from within the context of PowerBI after the connector has been deployed?

[mattmasson]

See:

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/desktop-diagnostics#collecting-mashup-traces
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/query-diagnostics
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/data-integration/gateway/service-gateway-tshoot#collect-logs-from-the-on-premises-data-gateway-app

[bgribaudo]

@mattmasson, is there a way to set some configuration value so that the IDE sets the log traces option when it runs tests?

[mattmasson]

You can create a custom task and pass command line parameters using the additionalArgs field.

If you go to Terminal | Run Task ..., you should see a powerquery folder with our build-in tasks. From there you can select the gear icon for one of the tasks to customize it.

It would look something like:

{
  "type": "powerquery",
  "operation": "run-test",
  "pathToConnector": "${config:powerquery.sdk.defaultExtension}",
  "pathToQueryFile": "${workspaceFolder}/mytestfile.query.pq",
  "additionalArgs": ["--logMashupEngineTraces", "User"],
  "problemMatcher": [],
  "label": "Run test with tracing"
}

It would be nice to have an extension level setting to always run with tracing on, but I think we'd also need some sort of cleanup functionality to go along with it.

PQTest will output the trace files to your %localappdata%\Microsoft\pqtest\Logs directory.

[bgribaudo]

Thanks, Matt!

[mattmasson]

@arindamroy19, also note that M statements are lazily evaluated, and query steps that aren't referenced/needed never actually get evaluated. So in your example, the diagnostics message would never be output unless another part of your query is actually trying to get the value of logMessage3.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/samples/trippin/8-diagnostics/readme