How to show Console.WriteLine output in my browser console or output window?

Question

I wrote System.Console.WriteLine("How can I see this debugging information in a browser"); in the model of my ASP.NET MVC4 project. How can I see this debugging string in the browser console, or at least in Visual Studio?. I can't find it in the output window of Visual Studio. Maybe I need to install some plugin from NuGet?

Answer 1

Console.WriteLine(...) will not be displayed. If you absolutely need to see output in the debugger, you'll have to use

System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("This will be displayed in output window");

and view it in the Output window. You can open the output window by going to Debug -> Window -> Output:

Here's an example of what this will all look like:

For further readings, check out this SO post.

Answer 2

You can write to your Javascript console from your C# Code using the following class

using System.Web;

public static class Javascript
{
    static string scriptTag = "<script type=\"\" language=\"\">{0}</script>";
    public static void ConsoleLog(string message)
    {       
        string function = "console.log('{0}');";
        string log = string.Format(GenerateCodeFromFunction(function), message);
        HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(log);
    }

    public static void Alert(string message)
    {
        string function = "alert('{0}');";
        string log = string.Format(GenerateCodeFromFunction(function), message);
        HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(log);
    }

    static string GenerateCodeFromFunction(string function)
    {
        return string.Format(scriptTag, function);
    }
}

Works just like its JS version, it actually converts your message to JS and injects it into the page.