dannycoates / node-inspector

Node Inspector is a debugger interface for nodeJS using the WebKit Web Inspector.

Getting Started

Requirements

• nodeJS
  • versions: 0.1.101 or later
• A WebKit based browser: Chrome, Safari, OmniWeb, etc.

Install

• With npm

    npm install node-inspector
  

• Or from source

Debugging

As an example lets debug test/hello.js, from the root project directory (node-inspector)

1. start the inspector in the background

    node-inspector &
   

2. start the node instance to debug

    node --debug test/hello.js
   

3. open https://127.0.0.1:8080 in your favorite WebKit based browser

   Chrome 5 users MUST use 127.0.0.1 NOT localhost or the browser will not connect to the debugger

4. you should now see the javascript source from nodeJS

5. select the hello.js script and set some breakpoints (far left line numbers)

6. now open https://127.0.0.1:8124/ in a new tab then go back to inspector tab

7. click "Step over next function call" and observe changes in the RHS panel

8. then watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOnK3NVnxL8

For more information on getting started see the wiki

Options

    --web-port=[port]     port to host the inspector (default 8080)

Cool stuff

• the WebKit Web Inspector debugger is a great js debugger interface, it works just as well for node
• uses WebSockets, so no polling for breaks
• remote debugging
• javascript top to bottom :)
• edit running code
• collaborative debugging

Known Issues

This is alpha quality code, so use at your own risk:

• be careful about viewing the contents of Buffer objects, each byte is displayed as an individual array element, for anything but tiny Buffers this will take too long to render
• while not stopped at a breakpoint the console doesn't always behave as you might expect
• pause on exceptions doesn't play nice with the node event loop
• closing the browser does not stop debugging, you must stop node-inspector manually

TODOS

• save application settings
• profiler panel

Thanks

This project respectfully uses code from and thanks the authors of:

• WebKit
• node
• node-websocket-server
• node-paperboy