How to debug node.js applications

Question

How do I debug a node.js server application? Right now I'm mostly using alert debugging with print statements like this:

sys.puts(sys.inspect(someVariable));

There must be a better way to debug. I know that google Chrome has a command line debugger. Is this debugger available for node.js as well?

Answer 1

Does node_debug meet your needs?

Answer 2

The V8 debugger released as part of the Google Chrome Developer Tools can be used to debug node.js scripts. A detailed explanation of how this works can be found in the node.js github wiki.

There is also ndb, a command line debugger written in node itself.

Answer 3

node-inspector could save the day! Use it from any browser supporting websockets. Breakpoints, profiler, livecoding etc... It is really awesome.