Using Function.toString to Troubleshoot JavaScript Issues

By  on  

Sometimes JavaScript bugs can be the most frustrating damn things in the world. That problem is compounded when a JavaScript file is created from multiple files on the server side or you simply aren't familiar with some of the code used in a project (i.e. troubleshooting an issue with a JavaScript framework you aren't familiar with. Sometimes just identifying the code within a function is enough to point you in the correct direction. So to quickly check the code for a given function, I'll type into the console something like:

myProblemFunction.toString();

That would return something like:

function myProblemFunction() {
	/* bunch of code here */
	
	some.problem().code;
	
	/* bunch of code here */
}

Awesome. Now that I can get the function code at a glance, I can more easily browse through what could be causing the issue and see what needs to be changed. Usually any hint you can get toward finding where the issue resides is a big help!

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Duplicate the jQuery Homepage Tooltips Using Dojo

    The jQuery homepage has a pretty suave tooltip-like effect as seen below: Here's how to accomplish this same effect using Dojo. The XHTML The above HTML was taken directly from the jQuery homepage -- no changes. The CSS The above CSS has been slightly modified to match the CSS rules already...

  • By
    Create a CSS Flipping Animation

    CSS animations are a lot of fun; the beauty of them is that through many simple properties, you can create anything from an elegant fade in to a WTF-Pixar-would-be-proud effect. One CSS effect somewhere in between is the CSS flip effect, whereby there's...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!