isotropic-console

A pre-configured Node.js console object with enhanced inspection settings and natural sorting of object properties.

Why Use This?

• Consistent Output: Standardized console output formatting across your applications
• Natural Sorting: Object properties are sorted naturally (e.g., "item2" before "item10")
• Unlimited Depth: Full inspection of nested objects with unlimited depth
• Improved Readability: Non-compact format with unlimited line length for better log readability
• Drop-in Replacement: Works as a direct replacement for the standard Node.js console

Installation

npm install isotropic-console

Usage

import _console from 'isotropic-console';

// Use just like the standard console
_console.log('Hello world');

// Complex objects are displayed with enhanced formatting
_console.log({
    deeply: {
        nested: {
            object: {
                with: [
                    'many',
                    'properties',
                    {
                        that: 'would normally be truncated'
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    }
});

// Object properties are sorted naturally
_console.log({
    item10: 'value',
    item2: 'value',
    item1: 'value'
});
// Output order: item1, item2, item10

Features

Enhanced Object Inspection

The console is configured with the following inspection options:

• breakLength: Infinity - No arbitrary line breaks in output
• colors: false - No ANSI color codes in object inspection (colors still work for console.error, etc.)
• compact: false - Full, readable formatting rather than compressed
• customInspect: true - Respects custom [util.inspect.custom] implementations
• depth: Infinity - No depth limitation for nested objects
• maxArrayLength: Infinity - Arrays are not truncated
• sorted: true - Object properties are sorted using natural sort

Natural Sorting

Object properties are sorted using the isotropic-natural-sort module, which ensures that:

• Properties are sorted alphabetically but in a human-friendly way
• Numeric parts of property names are sorted numerically (e.g., "prop2" before "prop10")
• Sorting is case-insensitive by default

Standard Console API

All standard console methods are available:

• console.log(), console.info(), console.debug() - Output to stdout
• console.error(), console.warn() - Output to stderr
• console.dir() - Object inspection
• console.table() - Display objects in tabular format
• console.time(), console.timeEnd() - Timing operations
• And all other methods from Node.js Console

Examples

Logging Objects with Natural Property Order

import _console from 'isotropic-console';

_console.log({
    z: 1,
    a: 2,
    item10: 3,
    item2: 4,
    item1: 5
});

// Output:
// {
//   a: 2,
//   item1: 5,
//   item2: 4,
//   item10: 3,
//   z: 1
// }

Inspecting Deeply Nested Objects

import _console from 'isotropic-console';

const _deepObject = {
    level1: {
        level2: {
            level3: {
                level4: {
                    data: [
                        1,
                        2,
                        3,
                        4,
                        5,
                        6,
                        7,
                        8,
                        9,
                        10,
                        11,
                        12
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    }
};

_console.log(deepObject);
// Output will show the complete object with all nesting levels
// and the full array, unlike standard console which would truncate

Integration with Logging Libraries

isotropic-console can be used as a replacement for the default console with many logging libraries:

import _console from 'isotropic-console';
import _winston from 'winston';

// Configure winston to use isotropic-console for console transport
const _logger = _winston.createLogger({
    transports: [
        new winston.transports.Console({
            console: _console
        })
    ]
});

Contributing

Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution guidelines.

Issues

If you encounter any issues, please file them at https://github.com/ibi-group/isotropic-console/issues