Debugging Windows Store app Background Tasks

Debugging Windows Store app Background Tasks

Windows Store apps can run operations in the background using background tasks. Background tasks are triggered using a background triggers like time or system maintenance. That raises a question which is how we can debug background tasks.

Visual Studio 2012 to the Rescue

Visual Studio 2012 can help you trigger a background task manually. First you need to add a breakpoint to the background task code that you want to check. After you set your breakpoint, you can trigger the background task using the Suspend drop down menu (part of the Debug Location toolbar). The Suspend drop down menu shows all the background tasks associated with the running app. In the next figure you can see the MyBackgroundTask task available in the suspend drop down menu:

Pressing the background task name will manually trigger the task.

Pay attention that if the background task isn’t registered nothing will happen and you won’t be able to debug it. 

That is it and now you can debug your code.

Summary

Visual Studio 2012 includes a feature that enables background task debugging. Knowing that can help you avoid waiting to trigger events to happen.