vizbug

A debug module that helps capture the debug context, plus object tracing information to help you better vizualise debug output

npm install vizbug

Usage

Consider the following example

class Storage {
  constructor () {
    this.debug = vizbug()
    this.debug('new instance')
  }

  write (data, cb) {
    this.debug('writing data to storage %b', data)
    setImmediate(cb)
  }
}

class DataStructure {
  constructor () {
    this.debug = vizbug()
    this.debug('new instance')
    this.storage = new Storage()
  }

  addData (data, cb) {
    this.debug('adding data to data structure %b', data)
    setImmediate(() =>{
      this.storage.write(data, cb)
    })
  }
}

const d = new DataStructure()

d.addData(Buffer.alloc(1000), function () {
  console.log('data added')
})

Running this with vizbug enabled produces the following debug output:

{"topic":"DataStructure","message":"new instance","filename":"/vizbug/example.js","line":18,"id":1,"context":1,"tracing":[],"date":"2019-09-25T09:39:13.803Z"}
{"topic":"Storage","message":"new instance","filename":"/vizbug/example.js","line":6,"id":2,"context":2,"tracing":[],"date":"2019-09-25T09:39:13.805Z"}
{"topic":"DataStructure","message":"adding data to data structure <0x00000000... (1000 b)>","filename":"/vizbug/example.js","line":23,"id":3,"context":1,"tracing":[1],"date":"2019-09-25T09:39:13.806Z"}
{"topic":"Storage","message":"writing data to storage <0x00000000... (1000 b)>","filename":"/vizbug/example.js","line":10,"id":4,"context":2,"tracing":[1],"date":"2019-09-25T09:39:13.808Z"}

For each object created a context integer helps you group which debug statements are related to each context.

In addition any object passed to vizbug is added to an internal tracing map. This tracing map help you figure out how contexts relate to each other. For example in our above gist, the same data is passed down from the data structure to the storage abstraction. We can see that in the above output as both tracing arrays share the same tracing id.

Using the tracing information we can infer the coupling between contexts when debugging which can help us find issues.

API

`log = vizbug([topic])`

Create a new log function. Per default this function is a noop unless the VIZBUG env var has been set.

If you set VIZBUG=true or VIZBUG=stdout, the debug logs will be printed to stdout. If you set VIZBUG=stderr it will be printed to stderr and finally VIZBUG=filename will store the debug logs as newline delimited JSON in that file.

Optionally pass a debug topic. If you don't pass a bug it will be inferred based on the class or function name of the callee.