Power up your logging and build good developer habits. As your codebase grows you’ll need to debug it more easily. One important tool in debugging is logging. This article focuses on the essential aspects of client-side JavaScript. Client-side logging For JavaScript, the logging your application will output will be visible in the console in your browser. This is different from server-side logging where logs will be written to a file or sent to a log aggregation server. It’s important to know that browsers handle logging differently, but the basics are the same. See here how different browsers handle logging: Chrome Firefox Safari Microsoft Edge A exists on how logging using should work, but . standard console unfortunately, not all browsers respect it Most likely you are already comfortable using , but there are more methods on the object to power up your logging! console.log() console Logging message levels JavaScript supports different levels of messages. They all work the same but the output looks different. The level of the message conveys different meaning, for example you should use an level when something went wrong, while the level can be used for more generic logs. error info I’m using Google Chrome version 98.0.4758 in my examples. console.log() Used for general output. Usually the same level as . info console.log("Look at me -- I'm a simple log line"); console.info() Usually identical to . log console.info("I look identical to log()"); console.debug() Used for verbose logs that you don’t want in your production application log output. This level is special because you need to . activate it yourself console.debug("Some debug output"); console.warn() Used for warnings. Formats the message as a warning and in some browsers includes a stack trace. console.warn("Warning! Something might be wrong"); console.error() Used for errors. Formats the message as an error and includes a stack trace. console.error("Error! Something went wrong"); Log objects like JSON To make it easier to read your object you can log it with JSON formatting applied. const obj = { name: "Simon", lang: "JS", colors: ["purple", "blue"] };
console.dir(obj); Counting things It may be useful to log how many times a function is invoked, for example. To do this you can call . It will log the number of times it’s been called. If no label was provided it will fall back to the label. console.count([label]) default console.count();
console.count();
console.count("fruit");
console.count();
console.count("fruit"); Group log messages Sometimes you might want to log lines that belong together. For this, you can use to create log groups. To log the group as collapsed you can use . console.group(label) console.groupCollapsed(label) const label = "Fruit";
console.group(label);
console.info("Apple");
console.info("Pear");
console.info("Banana");
console.info("Orange");
console.groupEnd(label); Measure time At some point in your career, you might need to optimize the time your code takes to run. Before knowing what you optimize you want to understand where time is spent. One tool you can use is to measure time is . This will start a timer that you can then stop and log using . console.time([label]) console.timeEnd([label]) console.time();
for (var i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {
  let random = Math.floor(Math.random() * i);
}
console.timeEnd(); Table formatting To make it easier to read your array you can log it with table formatting. const array = [
  { name: "Apple", color: "Red" },
  { name: "Banana", color: "Yellow" },
  { name: "Pear", color: "Green" },
  { name: "Orange", color: "Orange" }
];
console.table(array); Conclusion Client-side logging with JavaScript is straightforward! Using the built-in console object is the preferred way of logging in the browser. There are libraries out there but there’s really no need to use any. Originally published here

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How to Power Up Your Logging in JavaScript

How to Power Up Your Logging in JavaScript

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