console.log showing contents of array object

Question

I have tried using console.log so I can see the content of my array that contains multiple objects. However I get an error saying console.log is not an object etc. I'm using jquery 1.6.2 and my array is like this:

filters = {dvals:[{'brand':'1', 'count':'1'},                   {'brand':'2', 'count':'2'},                    {'brand':'3', 'count':'3'}]}  console.log(filters); 

What I want to to do is write out the contents of array(filters) to an alert box (that's what I thought console.log did) in the filters format. How do I do that?

Answer 1

there are two potential simple solutions to dumping an array as string. Depending on the environment you're using:

…with modern browsers use JSON:

JSON.stringify(filters); // returns this "{"dvals":[{"brand":"1","count":"1"},{"brand":"2","count":"2"},{"brand":"3","count":"3"}]}" 

…with something like node.js you can use console.info()

console.info(filters); // will output: { dvals:  [ { brand: '1', count: '1' },   { brand: '2', count: '2' },   { brand: '3', count: '3' } ] } 

---

Edit:

JSON.stringify comes with two more optional parameters. The third "spaces" parameter enables pretty printing:

JSON.stringify(                 obj,      // the object to stringify                 replacer, // a function or array transforming the result                 spaces    // prettyprint indentation spaces               ) 

example:

JSON.stringify(filters, null, "  "); // returns this "{  "dvals": [   {    "brand": "1",    "count": "1"   },   {    "brand": "2",    "count": "2"   },   {    "brand": "3",    "count": "3"   }  ] }" 

Answer 2

It's simple to print an object to console in Javascript. Just use the following syntax:

console.log( object ); 

or

console.log('object: %O', object ); 

A relatively unknown method is following which prints an object or array to the console as table:

console.table( object );

I think it is important to say that this kind of logging statement only works inside a browser environment. I used this with Google Chrome. You can watch the output of your console.log calls inside the Developer Console: Open it by right click on any element in the webpage and select 'Inspect'. Select tab 'Console'.