Javascript tip: nifty use of the console.log function in Firebug

A classic blunder in Javascript client side apps is heavy use of the incredibly useful Firebug feature that is console.log() and then forgetting to remove any such debugging and thus causing Javascript errors for people without Firebug. To remedy this use this little nifty function:

function log() {
  if (window.console && window.console.log)
  for (var i = 0, l = arguments.length; i < l; i++)
    console.log(arguments[i]);
}

That way you can do plenty of debugging and if you accidentally leave a logging line in your code it won't break anything even if they don't have Firebug installed/enabled. Also you can easily "annotate" your debugging by writing two things in one line. Like this:

function foo(bar) {
   log("bar is:", bar);
   return bar * 2;
}

Comments