JavaScript — Console API

Console API is one of the most important tools used while debugging. It helps the developers or more appropriately prevent the developers from applying the alert() again and again.

Console API can be used for:-

• Logging
• Asserting
• Clearing
• Counting
• Timing
• Grouping

So let's start with the first one,

LOGGING

console.log() is the most common method that is used to log the values to the console.

const name = "JAVASCRIPT";
console.log("--\> " + name + " \<--"); // --\> JAVASCRIPT \<--

Instead of log() there are some other logging methods such as info(), warn() and error .

console.log("Hi...");
console.info("How");
console.warn("are");
console.error("you");

Outputs will somewhat look like this,

Now, the stack trace can be triggered by using trace()

function hello(name = 'JAVASCRIPT') {
 console.trace(name); 
 return `${name}! is a programming language`; 
}
hello();

There are also console.dir() , console.dirxml() and console.debug()

console.dir()

const program = {
laptop: '💻',
mobile: '📱',
television: '📺'
}

console.dir(program);

It is basically used for printing the object in a formatted way

console.dirxml() is used to print the DOM elements.

console.debug() is just an alias for console.log().

ASSERTING

console.assert() is used to perform assertion tests.

console.assert('📺' == '2', 'No it is not equal');
// Output : No it is not equal

CLEARING

If you want to clear the console then this console.clear() is used.

COUNTING

The console.count() is used to count the number of times a particular statement has been invoked.

for(let index = 0; index \< 10; index++)
{
 if(index%2 === 0)
 console.count('even');
 else
 console.count('odd');
}

Output:

TIMING

The console object has time() and timeEnd() methods that help with analyzing the performance of pieces of your code. You first call console.time() by providing a string argument, then the code that you want to test, then call console.timeEnd() with the same string argument.

console.time('Time : ');

for(let i = 0; i \< 10000; i++){
// Business Logic
}

console.timeEnd('Time : ');

Output:

String passed inside of the time() and timeEnd() should always be same.

GROUPING

console.group() and console.groupEnd() are used to group the console messages as

console.group('Smileys');
console.log('😃');
console.log('😕');
console.log('😡');
console.group('Grinning Face');
console.log('😀');
console.log('😃');
console.log('😄');
console.log('😆');
console.groupEnd();
console.groupEnd();

Output:

These are some of the methods of the Javascript Console API.

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