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Override window.alert

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For years the only bit of feedback web developers could get was via alert("{str}") calls. These days we have the web console but, in rare cases, we don't have a console and alert calls are our only window into a value at a given time.

One problem: if an alert sneaks into production code, your site looks like it's been hacked. Your site looks like it's malware! To prevent any of those issues, you can add this snippet to your production build:

window.alert = console.log

This tiny line of JavaScript could save your site from catastrophe. There are many cases for overriding native functionality and this is a great example!

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Discussion

  1. jonathan santos

    it’s an interesting idea, and I’m not saying the world is perfect, but if instead of using this to avoid pushing debug code onto production, how would I go about testing for stuff like alerts and other weird edge cases

  2. Mr P

    In older IE browsers the browser will crash if console.log is called when the debug window is closed. Will this work then?

  3. dev

    override window.alert in IE for logggint using $.ajax to call WebService or REST API ?

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