var_dump (PHP) equivalent for node.js

Question

I'm looking for an equivalent of var_dump in node.js.

I'd like to send the content of the request / response circular structure as a part of the response.

I know I can see it in the console, but that's not what I'm looking for.

Answer 1

To get what you’d get in the console by using console.log as a string for sending to the client as part of your response, you can use util.inspect.

"use strict";  const http = require("http"); const util = require("util");  http.createServer((request, response) => {     response.setHeader("Content-Type", "text/plain;charset=utf-8");     response.end(util.inspect(request)); }).listen(8000, "::1"); 

Answer 2

You can simply use the NPM package var_dump

npm install var_dump --save-dev

Usage:

const var_dump = require('var_dump')
    
var variable = {
  'data': {
    'users': {
      'id': 12,
      'friends': [{
        'id': 1,
        'name': 'John Doe'
      }]
    }
  }
}
 
// print the variable using var_dump
var_dump(variable)

This will print:

object(1) {
    ["data"] => object(1) {
        ["users"] => object(2) {
            ["id"] => number(12)
            ["friends"] => array(1) {
                [0] => object(2) {
                    ["id"] => number(1)
                    ["name"] => string(8) "John Doe"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Link: https://www.npmjs.com/package/var_dump

Thank me later!

Answer 3

There is a npm package called circular-json, it's very good to use. I wonder why it is not built-in...