BUGLOG

A tiny node.js debugging utility modeled after node core's debugging technique.

Usage

buglog exposes a function; simply pass this function the name of your module, and it will return a decorated version of console.error for you to pass debug statements to. This will allow you to toggle the debug output for different parts of your module as well as the module as a whole.

Example app.js:

var debug = require('debug')('http')
  , http = require('http')
  , name = 'My App';

// fake app

debug('booting %s', name);

http.createServer(function(req, res){
  debug(req.method + ' ' + req.url);
  res.end('hello\n');
}).listen(3000, function(){
  debug('listening');
});

// fake worker of some kind

require('./worker');

Example worker.js:

var debug = require('debug')('worker');

setInterval(function(){
  debug('doing some work');
}, 1000);

The DEBUG environment variable is then used to enable these based on space or comma-delimited names. Here are some examples:

Windows note

On Windows the environment variable is set using the set command.

set DEBUG=*,-not_this

Note that PowerShell uses different syntax to set environment variables.

$env:DEBUG = "*,-not_this"

Then, run the program to be debugged as usual.

Millisecond diff

When actively developing an application it can be useful to see when the time spent between one debug() call and the next. Suppose for example you invoke debug() before requesting a resource, and after as well, the "+NNNms" will show you how much time was spent between calls.

When stdout is not a TTY, Date#toUTCString() is used, making it more useful for logging the debug information as shown below:

Conventions

If you're using this in one or more of your libraries, you should use the name of your library so that developers may toggle debugging as desired without guessing names. If you have more than one debuggers you should prefix them with your library name and use ":" to separate features. For example "bodyParser" from Connect would then be "connect:bodyParser".

Wildcards

The * character may be used as a wildcard. Suppose for example your library has debuggers named "connect:bodyParser", "connect:compress", "connect:session", instead of listing all three with DEBUG=connect:bodyParser,connect:compress,connect:session, you may simply do DEBUG=connect:*, or to run everything using this module simply use DEBUG=*.

You can also exclude specific debuggers by prefixing them with a "-" character. For example, DEBUG=*,-connect:* would include all debuggers except those starting with "connect:".

Environment Variables

When running through Node.js, you can set a few environment variables that will change the behavior of the debug logging:

Name	Purpose
DEBUG	Enables/disabled specific debugging namespaces.
DEBUG_COLORS	Whether or not to use colors in the debug output.
DEBUG_DEPTH	Object inspection depth.
DEBUG_SHOW_HIDDEN	Shows hidden properties on inspected objects.

Note: The environment variables beginning with DEBUG_ end up being converted into an Options object that gets used with %o/%O formatters. See the Node.js documentation for util.inspect() for the complete list.

Formatters

Debug uses printf-style formatting. Below are the officially supported formatters:

Formatter	Representation
%O	Pretty-print an Object on multiple lines.
%o	Pretty-print an Object all on a single line.
%s	String.
%d	Number (both integer and float).
%j	JSON. Replaced with the string '[Circular]' if the argument contains circular references.
%%	Single percent sign ('%'). This does not consume an argument.

Output streams

By default debug will log to stderr, however this can be configured per-namespace by overriding the log method:

Example stdout.js:

var debug = require('debug');
var error = debug('app:error');

// by default stderr is used
error('goes to stderr!');

var log = debug('app:log');
// set this namespace to log via console.log
log.log = console.log.bind(console); // don't forget to bind to console!
log('goes to stdout');
error('still goes to stderr!');

// set all output to go via console.info
// overrides all per-namespace log settings
debug.log = console.info.bind(console);
error('now goes to stdout via console.info');
log('still goes to stdout, but via console.info now');