Stability: 1 - Experimental
The inspector
module provides an API for interacting with the V8 inspector.
It can be accessed using:
const inspector = require('inspector');
contextifiedSandbox
{Object} The contextified object to attach to the inspector.options
{Object}name
{string} Name of the context. If not specified, a default namevm Module Context ${idx}
whereidx
is the incrementing index corresponding to this call will be used.origin
{string} URL of the webpage this context corresponds to. Defaults tofalse
.
Make inspector aware of the specified context. This allows code running in that
context to be debugged, including support for debugger
statement. If the
context is already being tracked by inspector, this function is a no-op.
Note: Calling this function will prevent contextifiedSandbox
from being
garbage collected. To prevent memory leaks, [inspector.detachContext()
][]
must be called after work on the context has been completed.
contextifiedSandbox
{Object} A contextified object- Returns: {boolean}
Check if the specified context is attached to V8 inspector.
contextifiedSandbox
{Object} The contextified object to detach from inspector
Inform the V8 inspector that the context has been destroyed. If the context is not being tracked by inspector, this function is a no-op.
- port {number} Port to listen on for inspector connections. Optional, defaults to what was specified on the CLI.
- host {string} Host to listen on for inspector connections. Optional, defaults to what was specified on the CLI.
- wait {boolean} Block until a client has connected. Optional, defaults to false.
Activate inspector on host and port. Equivalent to node --inspect=[[host:]port]
, but can be done programatically after node has
started.
If wait is true
, will block until a client has connected to the inspect port
and flow control has been passed to the debugger client.
Deactivate the inspector. Blocks until there are no active connections.
Return the URL of the active inspector, or undefined
if there is none.
The inspector.Session
is used for dispatching messages to the V8 inspector
back-end and receiving message responses and notifications.
Create a new instance of the inspector.Session
class. The inspector session
needs to be connected through session.connect()
before the messages
can be dispatched to the inspector backend.
inspector.Session
is an EventEmitter
with the following events:
- {Object} The notification message object
Emitted when any notification from the V8 Inspector is received.
session.on('inspectorNotification', (message) => console.log(message.method));
// Debugger.paused
// Debugger.resumed
It is also possible to subscribe only to notifications with specific method:
- {Object} The notification message object
Emitted when an inspector notification is received that has its method field set
to the <inspector-protocol-method>
value.
The following snippet installs a listener on the Debugger.paused
event, and prints the reason for program suspension whenever program
execution is suspended (through breakpoints, for example):
session.on('Debugger.paused', ({ params }) => {
console.log(params.hitBreakpoints);
});
// [ '/node/test/inspector/test-bindings.js:11:0' ]
Connects a session to the inspector back-end. An exception will be thrown if there is already a connected session established either through the API or by a front-end connected to the Inspector WebSocket port.
- method {string}
- params {Object}
- callback {Function}
Posts a message to the inspector back-end. callback
will be notified when
a response is received. callback
is a function that accepts two optional
arguments - error and message-specific result.
session.post('Runtime.evaluate', { expression: '2 + 2' },
(error, { result }) => console.log(result));
// Output: { type: 'number', value: 4, description: '4' }
The latest version of the V8 inspector protocol is published on the Chrome DevTools Protocol Viewer.
Node inspector supports all the Chrome DevTools Protocol domains declared by V8. Chrome DevTools Protocol domain provides an interface for interacting with one of the runtime agents used to inspect the application state and listen to the run-time events.
Immediately close the session. All pending message callbacks will be called
with an error. session.connect()
will need to be called to be able to send
messages again. Reconnected session will lose all inspector state, such as
enabled agents or configured breakpoints.