Force Stack Traces with JavaScript

By  on  

I recently inherited a Node.js project and man is that scary.  The code was well written but whenever you inherit a project you instantly inherit the fear of messing things up.  My goal was to fix a fairly routine bug, and finding the issue was fairly easy, but tracing through the code to figure out what called what and what passed what was a nightmare.

So I did the only thing I could do to figure out WTF was going on:

// The magic
console.log(new Error().stack);

/* SAMPLE:

Error
    at Object.module.exports.request (/home/vagrant/src/kumascript/lib/kumascript/caching.js:366:17)
    at attempt (/home/vagrant/src/kumascript/lib/kumascript/loaders.js:180:24)
    at ks_utils.Class.get (/home/vagrant/src/kumascript/lib/kumascript/loaders.js:194:9)
    at /home/vagrant/src/kumascript/lib/kumascript/macros.js:282:24
    at /home/vagrant/src/kumascript/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:118:13
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at _each (/home/vagrant/src/kumascript/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:39:24)
    at Object.async.each (/home/vagrant/src/kumascript/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:117:9)
    at ks_utils.Class.reloadTemplates (/home/vagrant/src/kumascript/lib/kumascript/macros.js:281:19)
    at ks_utils.Class.process (/home/vagrant/src/kumascript/lib/kumascript/macros.js:217:15)
*/

Of course the actual "error" doesn't matter -- the stack trace is exactly what you need to figure out what's calling what up the chain. When available you can also use console.trace() (when available) to achieve roughly the same output.  You can thank me later!

Recent Features

  • By
    Page Visibility API

    One event that's always been lacking within the document is a signal for when the user is looking at a given tab, or another tab. When does the user switch off our site to look at something else? When do they come back?

  • By
    Conquering Impostor Syndrome

    Two years ago I documented my struggles with Imposter Syndrome and the response was immense.  I received messages of support and commiseration from new web developers, veteran engineers, and even persons of all experience levels in other professions.  I've even caught myself reading the post...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Retrieve Google Analytics Visits and PageViews with PHP

    Google Analytics is an outstanding website analytics tool that gives you way more information about your website than you probably need. Better to get more than you want than not enough, right? Anyways I check my website statistics more often than I should and...

  • By
    Record Text Selections Using MooTools or jQuery AJAX

    One technique I'm seeing more and more these days (CNNSI.com, for example) is AJAX recording of selected text. It makes sense -- if you detect users selecting the terms over and over again, you can probably assume your visitors are searching that term on Google...

Discussion

  1. Roman

    How about console.trace()?

    • console.trace() doesn’t exist on Chrome on Android.

  2. MaxArt

    How about node-inspector? It lets you use Chrome’s developer tools (sort of) to set breakpoints and inspect the code.
    I’m not debugging any node project without it anymore!

  3. Stuart

    Linked from JavaScript Daily. You can also use node debug whatever.js and put a debugger; statement in the location you want to inspect. Then the bt command will give you the trace.

  4. This is the solution I always use on my apps:

    https://gist.github.com/Venerons/f54b7fbc17f9df4302cf

    You can’t have more info than this. Really.

  5. Loupax

    I used to just call an undefined function in order to make an error appear. Lazy means to the same end I’d say

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