[[painless-debugging]] === Painless Debugging ==== Debug.Explain Painless doesn't have a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93print_loop[REPL] and while it'd be nice for it to have one day, it wouldn't tell you the whole story around debugging painless scripts embedded in Elasticsearch because the data that the scripts have access to or "context" is so important. For now the best way to debug embedded scripts is by throwing exceptions at choice places. While you can throw your own exceptions (`throw new Exception('whatever')`), Painless's sandbox prevents you from accessing useful information like the type of an object. So Painless has a utility method, `Debug.explain` which throws the exception for you. For example, you can use {ref}/search-explain.html[`_explain`] to explore the context available to a {ref}/query-dsl-script-query.html[script query]. [source,console] --------------------------------------------------------- PUT /hockey/_doc/1?refresh {"first":"johnny","last":"gaudreau","goals":[9,27,1],"assists":[17,46,0],"gp":[26,82,1]} POST /hockey/_explain/1 { "query": { "script": { "script": "Debug.explain(doc.goals)" } } } --------------------------------------------------------- // TEST[s/_explain\/1/_explain\/1?error_trace=false/ catch:/painless_explain_error/] // The test system sends error_trace=true by default for easier debugging so // we have to override it to get a normal shaped response Which shows that the class of `doc.first` is `org.elasticsearch.index.fielddata.ScriptDocValues.Longs` by responding with: [source,console-result] --------------------------------------------------------- { "error": { "type": "script_exception", "to_string": "[1, 9, 27]", "painless_class": "org.elasticsearch.index.fielddata.ScriptDocValues.Longs", "java_class": "org.elasticsearch.index.fielddata.ScriptDocValues$Longs", ... }, "status": 400 } --------------------------------------------------------- // TESTRESPONSE[s/\.\.\./"script_stack": $body.error.script_stack, "script": $body.error.script, "lang": $body.error.lang, "position": $body.error.position, "caused_by": $body.error.caused_by, "root_cause": $body.error.root_cause, "reason": $body.error.reason/] You can use the same trick to see that `_source` is a `LinkedHashMap` in the `_update` API: [source,console] --------------------------------------------------------- POST /hockey/_update/1 { "script": "Debug.explain(ctx._source)" } --------------------------------------------------------- // TEST[continued s/_update\/1/_update\/1?error_trace=false/ catch:/painless_explain_error/] The response looks like: [source,console-result] --------------------------------------------------------- { "error" : { "root_cause": ..., "type": "illegal_argument_exception", "reason": "failed to execute script", "caused_by": { "type": "script_exception", "to_string": "{gp=[26, 82, 1], last=gaudreau, assists=[17, 46, 0], first=johnny, goals=[9, 27, 1]}", "painless_class": "java.util.LinkedHashMap", "java_class": "java.util.LinkedHashMap", ... } }, "status": 400 } --------------------------------------------------------- // TESTRESPONSE[s/"root_cause": \.\.\./"root_cause": $body.error.root_cause/] // TESTRESPONSE[s/\.\.\./"script_stack": $body.error.caused_by.script_stack, "script": $body.error.caused_by.script, "lang": $body.error.caused_by.lang, "position": $body.error.caused_by.position, "caused_by": $body.error.caused_by.caused_by, "reason": $body.error.caused_by.reason/] // TESTRESPONSE[s/"to_string": ".+"/"to_string": $body.error.caused_by.to_string/] Once you have a class you can go to <<painless-api-reference>> to see a list of available methods.