I know how to debug http applications using node-inspector and iisnode. But can I use node-inspector to debug a non http node application, on windows?
I tried:
node debug test.js
It says:
debugger listening on port 5858
But opening http://localhost:5858/
in Chrome does not do anything.
BTW: running node debug test.js
does start the command-line debugger which works. But it's nothing like node-inspector.
To use node-inspector, the right switch is node --debug
not node debug
Here are the detailed steps:
- install node-inspector globally (
npm install -g node-inspector
)
- from a command-line window, run:
node-inspector
- open Chrome and go to
http://localhost:8080/debug?port=5858
. You'll get the node-inspector UI but without any running app.
- from another command-line window, run your app with the
--debug
switch like this: node --debug test.js
- refresh the Chrome tab and voila!
A few interesting points:
- If you kill your app and start it again, just refresh the node-inspector tab. It will keep all your breakpoints.
- To break automatically on the first line start your app with
node --debug-brk test.js
Some links which might help you:
- http://vimeo.com/19465332 (screencast from Ryan himself).
- https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/using-eclipse-as-node-applications-debugger
It says: debugger listening on port 5858
I wondered myself about this but since the Node.js documentation indicates that the debugger is accessible via a simple TCP protocol and says nothing about HTTP my guess is that no, it won't be available at _http://localhost:5858.
"V8 comes with an extensive debugger which is accessible out-of-process via a simple TCP protocol" - http://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html
Very recently Microsoft released the node.js tools for Visual Studio. It has the very comfortable Visual Studio debugging for node.js.
node-inspector could be very helpful.
Use it from any browser supporting websockets.
Breakpoints, profiler, livecoding, etc..
http://erickrdch.com/2012/09/debug-a-nodejs-app-with-chrome-dev-tools.html
FYI, in OSX 10.8, Chrome v26 doesn't seem to work, but Safari 6 does using the same instructions as above and using 0.0.0.0:8080 to conect.
There is another post by Danny Coates somewhere that says to do it in the following order:
- Your node process: node --debug (or --debug-brk) my_program.js
- Node-inspector: node-inspector
- The browser pointed to 0.0.0.0:8080
If you are a noob like me on Windows, and you get 'node-inspector not recognized' or something about windows JScript error... despite global install, adding to PATH, etc. then this may help.
Navigate to C:\Users\urusername\AppData\Roaming\npm
Then run node-debug.cmd or node-inspector.cmd
You should get magical words like
Node Inspector v0.12.7
Visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/?port=5858 to start debugging.
Debugger listening on port 5858
Awesome. If you know of a better solution, please let me know