Programmatically print an object to the inspector console

[mcollina]

• Version: master (and all releases that had the new inspector)
• Platform: all
• Subsystem: inspector, console

Recently I've seen a couple of requests to logging libraries to route logs to the inspector console. As far as I know, this is currently not possible using the current API.

Do you think it's worth adding an API to programmatically print object to the console? What would be needed to add it?

[targos]

Are you asking for a way to print only to the inspector console (avoid having the output in stdout)?

[mcollina]

Yes, exactly. I think Node.js should provide a way for logging framework to send output there.

[targos]

Sounds good to me.

The original console object is overwritten when Node bootstraps:

node/lib/internal/bootstrap/node.js

Lines 380 to 392 in c01601e

	function setupGlobalConsole() {
	const originalConsole = global.console;
	const CJSModule = NativeModule.require('internal/modules/cjs/loader');
	// Setup Node.js global.console.
	const wrappedConsole = NativeModule.require('console');
	Object.defineProperty(global, 'console', {
	configurable: true,
	enumerable: false,
	value: wrappedConsole,
	writable: true
	});
	setupInspector(originalConsole, wrappedConsole, CJSModule);
	}

I suppose we could keep a reference to it and export it from a public module. Maybe require('console').inspector or require('inspector').console ?

[devsnek]

inspector.console sounds good to me

[mcollina]

I'm preparing a PR.

[mcollina]

Fixed in 19795d8