Use XHR/fetch Breakpoints!

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Web debugging tools are so incredibly excellent these days. I remember the days where they didn't exist and debugging was a total nightmare, even for the simplest of problems. A while back I introduced many of you to Logpoints, a way to output console.log messages without needing to change the source files. Another great breakpoint type is XHR/fetch breakpoints, allowing you to pause execution when an AJAX call is made. Let's look at XHR/fetch breakpoints!

To set an XHR/fetch breakpoint, open your browser's Developer Tools and click the Sources tab -- the same tab you open for other breakpoints. Under the XHR/fetch accordion item, click the big "+" button. You'll see an empty text input:

Within that text input, type a string that you'd like to break all XHR/fetch calls on. For example, if I wanted to break any time a fetch request was made, I would input davidwalsh.name:

In the case above, a XHR/fetch request breakpoint halts execution because a request is made to https://davidwalsh.name/url-canparse. You'll be able to step through and step into like you can with regular breakpoints, and you'll get a full Call Stack pane to see how execution got to a given point.

XHR/fetch breakpoints are another great way to debug your web app. The more reliant we are on dynamic websites with frequently changing content, debugging fetch calls is a must. Happy debugging!

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Discussion

  1. // Function to make an XHR request to a fake API
    function makeXHRRequest() {
      const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
      xhr.open('GET', 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1', true);
    
      // Set a breakpoint here to inspect xhr object
      // debugger;
    
      xhr.onload = function () {
        if (xhr.status === 200) {
          const response = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);
          console.log('XHR Response:', response);
    
          // Set a breakpoint here to inspect the response
          // debugger;
        } else {
          console.error('XHR Request failed with status:', xhr.status);
        }
      };
    
      xhr.send();
    }
    
    // Function to make a fetch request to a fake API
    async function makeFetchRequest() {
      // Set a breakpoint here to inspect fetch options
      // debugger;
    
      try {
        const response = await fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/2');
        if (!response.ok) {
          throw new Error(Fetch Request failed with status: ${response.status});
        }
    
        const data = await response.json();
        console.log('Fetch Response:', data);
    
        // Set a breakpoint here to inspect the data
        // debugger;
      } catch (error) {
        console.error('Fetch Request Error:', error);
      }
    }
    
    // Call the XHR and Fetch functions
    makeXHRRequest();
    makeFetchRequest();
    

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