The first thing client-side Javascript developers miss when starting out with Node.js is the ability to debug their code through a GUI debugger as they are acustomed to when developing for the browser.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the Node.js community came up with GUI debuggers and as of today, the most widespread one is node-inspector.

In this post, I won’t go into the details of using node-inspector but I will instead introduce a neat feature that many Node.js developers aren’t aware of or don’t know how to use.

This feature is called the debugger statement. If you have ever caught yourself firing up node-inspector and browsing through the huge file pane on the left in order to find a file and insert a breakpoint, then this post should save you a lot of trouble in the future.

Here’s what the ECMA-262 specification has to say about the debugger statement:

Syntax

DebuggerStatement :

debugger ;

Evaluating the DebuggerStatement production may allow an implementation to cause a breakpoint when run under a debugger. If a debugger is not present or active this statement has no observable effect.

In other words, you can insert breakpoints directly in your code using debugger;, fire up your app in debug mode, open your debugging client and the breakpoint will be set. Don’t forget to remove debugger; from your code once you are done debugging!

Here’s a quick demonstration.

1. Insert debugger; statement in your code

   

2. Fire up node-inspector

    node-inspector;
   

3. Launch your app in debugging mode (don’t forget to use the --debug-brk flag if your debugger statement is “early” in your code)

    node --debug server.js
   

4. Open the debugging client

   

No more hunting for files!