Reading and Interpreting Salesforce Apex Debug Logs

What's in an Apex Debug Log

An Apex debug log is pipe-delimited. Each line has a nanosecond timestamp, an event type, and event data:

03:21:05.0 (1234567)|METHOD_ENTRY|[5]|01p|MyClass.myMethod()

Key event types:

• EXECUTION_STARTED / EXECUTION_FINISHED
• CODE_UNIT_STARTED / CODE_UNIT_FINISHED
• METHOD_ENTRY / METHOD_EXIT
• SOQL_EXECUTE_BEGIN / SOQL_EXECUTE_END
• DML_BEGIN / DML_END
• EXCEPTION_THROWN / FATAL_ERROR

Rendering the Tree

Because method and code-unit entries nest, the log is best read as a tree. Paste it into the FormatHub Salesforce Log Cleaner to get an indented, icon-enhanced hierarchy.