a-nicer-console

Fancy extras for the Node console.

Features

This is a drop-in replacement for Node's native console; all the original console functions remain intact.

• Adds colors to the output when using console.error|warn|info|success
• Logs deeply nested objects
• Adds the function console.success which is essentially console.log in a, by default, green tone
• Adds the function console.file which writes the log to a file instead of stdout
• Allows adding your own functions by adding a key-value pair to the color configuration. This will, just like console.success, be a colorized version of console.log

Installation

You can add a-nicer-console to your project with:

npm i a-nicer-console

Usage

import console from 'a-nicer-console' 
// alternatively: const console = require('a-nicer-console')

// Colored console output when using `console.error|warn|info|success`
console.error('This is an error message');
console.warn('This is a warning message');
console.info('This is an info message');
console.success('This is a success message, a functionality provided by this package');

// Outputting of deeply nested objects
const obj = { /* some deeply nested Object */ };

// Output the whole object; the native console would only print: 
// { a: { deeply: { nested: [Object] } } }. 
// In difference to `console.dir` you don't need to provide a configuration object.
console.log(obj); 

// Write to a log file, by default
console.file(obj, 'The large object and this message should be written to your log file');

Configuration

Maybe you like this package but the colors aren’t to your taste. Or you want to add console.foo() in some fancy color. Finally, if you are using a log file, you have to provide the path to this file somewhere. This is where the configuration file comes into the game.

Let’s see how this works. The default configuration looks like this:

{
    log: 'logs/console.log',
    colors: {
        error: '#FF5E5B',
        warn: '#FFBA5B',
        info: '#4DBDD9',
        success: '#ACDB4E',
        log: 'reset'
    }
}

To overwrite these values create a file called console-config.json at the root of your project, all values are optional. This package contains a file called console-config.example that you can use as a template.

Acceptable values

• ANSI escape codes. Some of these values allow adding formats such as bold or italic etc.
• RGB arrays (e.g. [51, 51, 102])
• Colors in hex format (e.g. #333366 or #336)

Adding custom functions

Custom functions provide a new flavor of console.log with your own colors, nothing complex. Add a key-value pair to your configuration file like in this example:

{
    "colors": {
        "customFunction": [253, 134, 18]
    }
}

You can use this new flavor like so:

console.customFunction('This is a message which should be orange');

Example configuration

Your console-config.json should look about like this, again, all values are optional:

{
   "log": "logs/my-log.txt",
   "colors": {
      "error": [255, 0, 0],
      "warn": "#ff0",
      "info": "blueBright",
      "success": "#00ff00",
      "log": "reset",
      "customFunction": [253, 134, 18]
   }
}

Credits

Under the hood, a-nicer-console uses chalk and a bit of fs-extra. And then of course whatever they are using as well. Thanks to the authors for their work!