Node Inspector is a debugger interface for Node.js applications that uses the Blink Developer Tools (formerly WebKit Web Inspector).
Since version 6.3, Node.js provides a built-in DevTools-based debugger which mostly deprecates Node Inspector, see e.g. this blog post to get started. The built-in debugger is developed directly by the V8/Chromium team and provides certain advanced features (e.g. long/async stack traces) that are too difficult to implement in Node Inspector.
$ npm install -g node-inspector
where app.js
is the name of your main Node application JavaScript file.
See available configuration options here
The node-debug
command will load Node Inspector in your default browser.
NOTE: Node Inspector works in Chrome and Opera only. You have to re-open the inspector page in one of those browsers if another browser is your default web browser (e.g. Safari or Internet Explorer).
Node Inspector works almost exactly as the Chrome Developer Tools. Read the excellent DevTools overview to get started.
Other useful resources:
The Blink DevTools debugger is a powerful JavaScript debugger interface. Node Inspector supports almost all of the debugging features of DevTools, including:
The debugged process must be started with --debug-brk
, this way the script is paused on the first line.
Note: node-debug
adds this option for you by default.
When in doubt, refresh the page in browser
Yes. Node Inspector must be running on the same machine, but your browser can be anywhere. Just make sure port 8080 is accessible.
And if Node Inspector is not running on your remote machine, you can also debug it as long as your local machine can connect it. In this way, you must launch Node Inspector with --no-inject
which means some features are not supported such as profiling and consoling output inspection.
So how to debug remote machine with your local Node Inspector?
$ node-inspector --debug-host 192.168.0.2 --no-inject then open the url http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?port=5858
$ node-inspector --no-inject then specify the remote machine address as a host parameter in the url e.g.) http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?host=192.168.123.12&port=5858
How do I specify files to hide?Create a JSON-encoded array. You must escape quote characters when using a command-line option.
$ node-inspector --hidden='["node_modules/framework"]'
Note that the array items are interpreted as regular expressions.
UI doesn't load or doesn't work and refresh didn't helpMake sure that you have adblock disabled as well as any other content blocking scripts and plugins.
How can I (selectively) delete debug session metadata?You may want to delete debug session metadata if for example Node Inspector gets in a bad state with some watch variables that were function calls (possibly into some special c-bindings). In such cases, even restarting the application/debug session may not fix the problem.
Node Inspector stores debug session metadata in the HTML5 local storage. You can inspect the contents of local storage and remove any items as needed. In Google Chrome, you can execute any of the following in the JavaScript console:
// Remove all window.localStorage.clear() // Or, to list keys so you can selectively remove them with removeItem() window.localStorage // Remove all the watch expressions window.localStorage.removeItem('watchExpressions') // Remove all the breakpoints window.localStorage.removeItem('breakpoints')
When you are done cleaning up, hit refresh in the browser.
Node Inspector takes a long time to start up.Try setting --no-preload to true. This option disables searching disk for *.js at startup. Code will still be loaded into Node Inspector at runtime, as modules are required.
How do I debug Mocha unit-tests?You have to start _mocha
as the debugged process and make sure the execution pauses on the first line. This way you have enough time to set your breakpoints before the tests are run.
If you are running on a Unix system you can simply run the following command. The $(which ..)
statement gets replaced with the full path to the gulp-cli.
$ node-debug $(which gulp) task
If you are running on Windows, you have to get the full path of gulp.js
to make an equivalent command:
> node-debug %appdata%\npm\node_modules\gulp\bin\gulp.js task
You can omit the task
part to run the default
task.
While running node-debug
is a convenient way to start your debugging session, there may come time when you need to tweak the default setup.
There are three steps needed to get you up and debugging:
1. Start the Node Inspector serverYou can leave the server running in background, it's possible to debug multiple processes using the same server instance.
2. Enable debug mode in your Node processYou can either start Node with a debug flag like:
$ node --debug your/node/program.js
or, to pause your script on the first line:
$ node --debug-brk your/short/node/script.js
Or you can enable debugging on a node that is already running by sending it a signal:
Get the PID of the node process using your favorite method. pgrep
or ps -ef
are good
$ pgrep -l node 2345 node your/node/server.js
Send it the USR1 signal
Windows does not support UNIX signals. To enable debugging, you can use an undocumented API function process._debugProcess(pid)
:
Get the PID of the node process using your favorite method, e.g.
> tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq node.exe" Image Name PID Session Name Session# Mem Usage ========================= ======== ================ =========== ============ node.exe 3084 Console 1 11,964 K
Call the API:
> node -e "process._debugProcess(3084)"
Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/?port=5858 in the Chrome browser.
Both node-inspector
and node-debug
use rc module to manage configuration options.
Places for configuration:
node-inspector_
--config file
then from that file.node-inspectorrc
or the first found looking in ./ ../ ../../ ../../../
etc.$HOME/.node-inspectorrc
$HOME/.node-inspector/config
$HOME/.config/node-inspector
$HOME/.config/node-inspector/config
/etc/node-inspectorrc
/etc/node-inspector/config
All configuration sources that where found will be flattened into one object, so that sources earlier in this list override later ones.
Option Alias Default Description general --help -h Display information about available options.--help -l
to display full usage info.
--help <option>
to display quick help on option
. --version -v Display Node Inspector's version. --debug-port -d 5858 Node/V8 debugger port.
node --debug={port}
) --web-host 0.0.0.0 Host to listen on for Node Inspector's web interface.
node-debug
listens on 127.0.0.1
by default. --web-port -p 8080 Port to listen on for Node Inspector's web interface. node-debug --debug-brk -b true Break on the first line.
node --debug-brk
) --nodejs [] Pass NodeJS options to debugged process.
node --option={value}
) --script [] Pass options to debugged process.
node app --option={value}
) --cli -c false CLI mode, do not open browser. node-inspector --save-live-edit false Save live edit changes to disk (update the edited files). --preload true Preload *.js files. You can disable this option
--no-inject.network
. Allowed keys : network
, profiles
, console
. --hidden [] Array of files to hide from the UI,
$ node-debug [general-options] [node-debug-options] [node-inspector-options] [script]
$ node-inspector [general-options] [node-inspector-options]
Display full usage info:
Set debug port of debugging process to 5859
:
Pass --web-host=127.0.0.2
to node-inspector. Start node-inspector to listen on 127.0.0.2
:
$ node-debug --web-host 127.0.0.2 app
Pass --option=value
to debugging process:
$ node-debug app --option value
Start node-inspector to listen on HTTPS:
$ node-debug --ssl-key ./ssl/key.pem --ssl-cert ./ssl/cert.pem app
Ignore breakpoints in files stored in node_modules
folder or ending in .test.js
:
$ node-debug --hidden node_modules/ --hidden \.test\.js$ app
Add --harmony
flag to the node process running the debugged script:
$ node-debug --nodejs --harmony app
Disable preloading of .js
files:
$ node-debug --no-preload app
Use dashed option names in RC files. Sample config file (to be saved as .node-inspectorrc
):
{ "web-port": 8088, "web-host": "0.0.0.0", "debug-port": 5858, "save-live-edit": true, "preload": false, "hidden": ["\.test\.js$", "node_modules/"], "nodejs": ["--harmony"], "stack-trace-limit": 50, "ssl-key": "./ssl/key.pem", "ssl-cert": "./ssl/cert.pem" }
Making Node Inspector the best debugger for node.js cannot be achieved without the help of the community. The following resources should help you to get started.
Big thanks to the many contributors to the project, see Contributors on GitHub
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