How to debug a basic node.js application (not http

Question

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.

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BTW: running node debug test.js does start the command-line debugger which works. But it's nothing like node-inspector.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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:

1. Your node process: node --debug (or --debug-brk) my_program.js
2. Node-inspector: node-inspector
3. The browser pointed to 0.0.0.0:8080

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

Very recently Microsoft released the node.js tools for Visual Studio. It has the very comfortable Visual Studio debugging for node.js.