Override window.alert

By  on  

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!

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
    5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  Can you blame us though?  We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Multiple File Upload Input

    More often than not, I find myself wanting to upload more than one file at a time.  Having to use multiple "file" INPUT elements is annoying, slow, and inefficient.  And if I hate them, I can't imagine how annoyed my users would be.  Luckily Safari, Chrome...

  • By
    Assign Anchor IDs Using MooTools 1.2

    One of my favorite uses of the MooTools JavaScript library is the SmoothScroll plugin. I use it on my website, my employer's website, and on many customer websites. The best part about the plugin is that it's so easy to implement. I recently ran...

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 ?

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