console-powers

Craft beautiful browser console messages. Debug & inspect data with elegant outputs. Small & tree-shakable.

Install

npm install console-powers

Why

• Debugging large objects with console.log() is hard — you either spend time printing only parts or you click multiple times to expand each time.
• console.table() always displays an (index) column that adds clutter.
• console.table() doesn't support displaying nested objects in the table cell making it's use limited.
• Better date/time printing, simpler Map printing, adaptive string trimming, and many more improvements over default logging methods.

Examples

Table

import { consoleTable } from "console-powers";

consoleTable([
    {
        model: 'MacBook Air 13"',
        year: new Date(2020, 10, 23),
        price: 999,
    },
    {
        model: 'MacBook Air 15"',
        year: new Date(2023, 9, 18),
        price: 1299,
    },
    {
        model: 'MacBook Pro 13"',
        year: new Date(2019, 11, 2),
        price: 1499,
    },
])

Deep object

import { consoleInspect } from "console-powers";

consoleInspect({
    type: "group",
    priority: 1,
    items: [{ type: "new" }, { type: "delimiter" }, { type: "value" }],
    location: {
        start: {
            line: 1,
            column: 0,
        },
        end: {
            line: 4,
            column: 10,
        },
    },
});

Styling

import { consolePrint, consoleText } from "console-powers";

consolePrint(
    consoleText("90s", {
        fontSize: "200px",
        color: "hsl(330, 100%, 50%)",
        textShadow:
            "0 2px 0 hsl(330, 100%, 25%), 0 3px 2px hsla(330, 100%, 15%, 0.5), /* next */ 0 3px 0 hsl(350, 100%, 50%), 0 5px 0 hsl(350, 100%, 25%), 0 6px 2px hsla(350, 100%, 15%, 0.5), /* next */ 0 6px 0 hsl(20, 100%, 50%), 0 8px 0 hsl(20, 100%, 25%), 0 9px 2px hsla(20, 100%, 15%, 0.5), /* next */ 0 9px 0 hsl(50, 100%, 50%), 0 11px 0 hsl(50, 100%, 25%), 0 12px 2px hsla(50, 100%, 15%, 0.5), /* next */ 0 12px 0 hsl(70, 100%, 50%), 0 14px 0 hsl(70, 100%, 25%), 0 15px 2px hsla(70, 100%, 15%, 0.5), /* next */ 0 15px 0 hsl(90, 100%, 50%), 0 17px 0 hsl(90, 100%, 25%), 0 17px 2px hsla(90, 100%, 15%, 0.5)",
    }),
);

consoleInspect()

Great for debugging. Especially great as a console.log() substitute for nested objects/arrays. It's like a more powerful version of util.inspect() built for the browser console.

consoleInspect(value: unknown, options?: ConsoleInspectOptions): ConsoleSpan[]

ConsoleInspectOptions.depth

Type: number
Default: 2

How much levels to expand the object. Levels after that will be collapsed.

ConsoleInspectOptions.wrap

Type: "auto" | "single-line" | "multi-line" | number
Default: "auto"

Configure when the algorithm puts things on new lines:

• "auto" — tries to guess the available space and wraps based on it.
• "single-line" — never wraps on new lines, the entire output is a single line.
• "multi-line" — always starts a new line when dwelling into a new object/array.
• number — set the maximum number of characters per line before it wraps to the next line.

ConsoleInspectOptions.indent

Type: number
Default: 4

How much spaces to add when going down a level.

ConsoleInspectOptions.theme

Type: 'light' | 'dark'
Default: automatically determined based on the system theme.

Determines the colors that will be used to style the output.

ConsoleInspectOptions.print

Type: boolean
Default: true

If set to false, the method won't print to the console. In this case, you probably want to get the return value of the method and use it.

consoleTable()

Great for debugging. Especially great when you have an array of objects that aren't deeply nested.

consoleTable(value: object, options: ConsoleTableOptions): ConsoleSpan[]

ConsoleTableOptions.wrap

Type: "auto" | number
Default: "auto"

ConsoleTableOptions.theme

Type: 'light' | 'dark'
Default: automatically determined based on the system theme.

Determines the colors that will be used to style the output.

ConsoleTableOptions.print

Type: boolean
Default: true

If set to false, the method won't print to the console. In this case, you probably want to get the return value of the method and use it.

API (core)

consolePrint(spans: ConsoleSpan[]): void

Prints the provided spans to the console.

consoleText(text: string, style?: ConsoleStyle): ConsoleSpan

Creates a styled text span.

consoleObject(object: object): ConsoleSpan

An object, class, HTML element. It shows a preview of the object and an option to expand it to see it's properties. The same thing as console.dirxml(object).

consoleApply(spans: ConsoleSpan | ConsoleSpan[], style: ConsoleStyle): ConsoleSpan[]

Apply additional styles to all provided spans.

consoleGroup(options: ConsoleGroupOptions): ConsoleSpan

It creates a group using console.group() or console.groupCollapsed() with the provided header and body.

consolePrint(
    consoleGroup({
        expanded: false, // default "false"
        header: "Expand me",
        body: "Here I am",
    }),
);

Note: The method calls consoleFlush() and flushes everything up until now before starting a new group.

consoleFlush(): ConsoleSpan

Calls console.log() on all spans provided before it. Internally, consolePrint() uses consoleFlush() at the end.

consolePrint(
    consoleText('take a look at'),
    consoleObject(object),
    consoleFlush(),
    consoleText('this is a new line and a new console.log() statement')
)

ConsoleStyle

• background and its longhand equivalents
• border and its longhand equivalents
• border-radius
• box-decoration-break
• box-shadow
• clear and float
• color
• display
• font and its longhand equivalents
• line-height
• margin
• outline and its longhand equivalents
• padding
• text-* properties such as text-transform
• white-space
• word-spacing and word-break
• writing-mode