Better Node.js Console Dumps with console-probe

By  on  

Writing JavaScript in the Node.js environment has always felt a bit more difficult; probably because browser developer tools have become incredibly powerful, interactive, and visually appealing.  Using console.log on the client side isn't the best of experiences and obviously isn't interactive.

Though not interactive, I've found that console-probe is an improvement over console.log, providing me highlighted property types, lengths, and a nice visual tree view.

const probe = require('console-probe')

const donut = {
  'id': '0001',
  'type': 'donut',
  'name': 'Cake',
  'description': 'A small fried cake of sweetened dough, typically in the shape of a ball or ring.',
  'ppu': 0.55,
  'common': true,
  'batters':
  {
    'batter':
    [
      { 'id': '1001', 'type': 'Regular' },
      { 'id': '1002', 'type': 'Chocolate' },
      { 'id': '1003', 'type': 'Blueberry' },
      { 'id': '1004', 'type': "Devil's Food" }
    ]
  },
  // .....


// Highlight nicely to console
const prober = probe.get()
prober(donut)

console-probe is one of those nice, luxury utilities that can make debugging in a static environment just a bit better!

Recent Features

  • By
    Interview with a Pornhub Web Developer

    Regardless of your stance on pornography, it would be impossible to deny the massive impact the adult website industry has had on pushing the web forward. From pushing the browser's video limits to pushing ads through WebSocket so ad blockers don't detect them, you have...

  • By
    CSS vs. JS Animation: Which is Faster?

    How is it possible that JavaScript-based animation has secretly always been as fast — or faster — than CSS transitions? And, how is it possible that Adobe and Google consistently release media-rich mobile sites that rival the performance of native apps? This article serves as a point-by-point...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Background Animations

    Background animations are an awesome touch when used correctly.  In the past, I used MooTools to animate a background position.  Luckily these days CSS animations are widely supported enough to rely on them to take over JavaScript-based animation tasks.  The following simple CSS snippet animates...

  • By
    Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos IV

    Did you know you can triple-heart things on CodePen? We’ve had that little not-so-hidden feature forever. You can click that little heart button on any Pen (or Project, Collection, or Post) on CodePen to show the creator a little love, but you can click it again...

Discussion

  1. Console probe seems to be an interesting improvement and it is obvious it could make javascript programming simpler.

  2. Paolo

    Nice. For me though,

    console.dir({ process }, {colors: 1, depth: Infinity})

    (or any other depth that suits your use case) does the job for many use cases.

  3. Grant Carthew

    The console-probe package has been updated since this article was written. It now has complex type support.

    As Paolo has pointed out, console.dir is quite good however it is a little verbose when all you want to do is see the API that is exposed by an object. Also, console-probe includes function signatures.

  4. Thanks for clarification and one more guys, I have a request for you – Could you please help me change the directory of my Node.js script?

    #!/usr/bin/env node
    process.chdir('/Users')
    

    I know it can be done through process.chdir(directory) but I do not know how to do that.

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