Tip #1033: Use Fiddler to boost client-side development

Today’s tip is from Matt Beard – thank you! And, hey, you can be a guest tipster too – just send your tip to jar@crmtipoftheday.com.

As a CRM developer, I regularly run through this exact process step by step when writing WebResources such as HTML or Javascript and I’m sure others do too.

  1. Write your code in your IDE of choice
  2. Find/create the WebResource in CRM
  3. Choose your File
  4. Save & wait
  5. Publish & wait some more
  6. Navigate to the form & Refresh
  7. Find your made a tiny mistake meaning you have to repeat 1 through 6 again!

I’ve always disliked this long winded approach, until I found out about AutoResponder within Fiddler! AutoResponder lets you write a rule, either with an exact match or a regex match and allows you to return a local file to the browser rather than the original.

In this example:

Mapping web resource file in Fiddler

When we try to load the “mb_customwebresource” file from the Dynamics system, we would actually be given the one from my local hard drive meaning all I need to do during my development is make my code change, save the file locally and refresh the htm!

If I tried to actually calculate how much time this has saved me in the last month alone, my employer would be a very happy chap!

7 thoughts on “Tip #1033: Use Fiddler to boost client-side development

  1. Martin Tölk says:

    Sounds awesome! I will try it in a few minutes. Specially with low Internet Speed this is a huge win. This will Speed up my Development Time while riding Train 🙂

  2. Damon Futter says:

    If you like Autoresponder, you probably ought to also give “Imposter” a try.
    It’s a plugin for Fiddler written by one of the developers at Sonoma Partners with Dynamics 365 development in mind.
    I found it easy to configure and was up and running in a couple of minutes.
    https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/sonomapartners/archive/2016/09/08/speeding-up-web-resource-development-with-imposter-for-fiddler

  3. chandra says:

    Make sure to clear browser cache, as this won’t work sometime

  4. Scott Durow says:

    You’ll usually need to use a regex as I describe here – http://www.sparklexrm.com/s/Tutorials/SetUpNewProject.html (Step 14)

    Also – make sure you check the ‘Disable Caching’ checkbox

  5. Linn Zaw Win says:

    Is this tip still working in Unified Interface form?
    I can’t seem to find the session with the URL of the web resource in the Unified Interface form.

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