Introduction

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. It is one of the most popular platform for building web server applications. Therefore, we need to get a better understanding of the debug options available for Node.js applications.

Option 1: The Built-in Debugger

The command line debugger is available for the Node.js. You can check here for more documentation.

To use the built-in debugger, start Node.js with the debug argument followed by the path to the script to debug;

node debug [your app]

A prompt will be displayed indicating successful launch of the debugger.

An Example using debugger

for(var i=0; i<5; i++){
  debugger;
  console.log(i);
}
console.log("done");

If we run this app via node debug app.js, it will break when the code hits the debugger line shown below:

$ node debug app.js
< debugger listening on port 5858
connecting... ok
break in /home/robin/app.js:3
  1 
  2 for(var i=0; i<5; i++){ 
  > 3 debugger; 
  4 console.log(i); 5 }
debug>

From here, you can use the following debug commands (found in the Node docs) to step through your code:

Commands	Meaning
cont, c	Continue execution
next, n	Step next
step, s	Step in
out, o	Step out
pause	Pause running code

Option 2: Node Inspector

Node-Inspector could save the day! Use it from any browser supporting WebSocket. Breakpoints, profiler, livecoding, etc... It is really awesome.

Install it with:

npm install -g node-inspector

Once installed, use it to run your Node app by typing:

node-debug app.js

And you should see output that looks something like this:

Node Inspector is now available from http://127.0.0.1:8080/?ws=127.0.0.1:8080&port=5858 
Debugging `app.js`  
Debugger listening on port 5858

It may open up Chrome (assuming Chrome is your default browser) and immediately bring up your app. If it doesn’t do that, simply navigate to the address from the console output (http://127.0.0.1:8080/?ws=127.0.0.1:8080&port=5858 in above example). You can browse your source code and set breakpoints just as you would when debugging client-side JavaScript.

Option 3 - IDE Debuggers

Another way to get access to a nice Node debug environment is to use an IDE, such as Web Storm and Visual Studio Code.

Web Storm debugging

Visual Studio Code debugging

References & Resources

• http://stackoverflow.com/
• http://spin.atomicobject.com/2015/09/25/debug-node-js/