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

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

To use node-inspector, the right switch is node --debug not node debug

Here are the detailed steps:

1. install node-inspector globally (npm install -g node-inspector)
2. from a command-line window, run: node-inspector
3. open Chrome and go to http://localhost:8080/debug?port=5858. You'll get the node-inspector UI but without any running app.
4. from another command-line window, run your app with the --debug switch like this: node --debug test.js
5. 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