debugging node.js with node-inspector

Try to run node --debug-brk app.js instead of just --debug. Your application may not be pausing before node inspector hooks into the node process. Using --debug-brk will force node to break on the first line of your app and wait for a debugger to attach to the process. Loading the node-inspector web interface is what causes node-inspector to attach to your node process; that's why you include the node debug port in the query string (localhost:8080/debug?port=5858). You're telling node-inspector what port it should reach out and attach to.

Here's an animated gif I put together showing a complete install and run of node-inspector.

In the gif I use the --debug flag because I'm not debugging any code that runs right at startup. I'm debugging inside a request handler, which only fires when the page is requested. Thus, refreshing the page causes node-inspector to break on that line.

I also put together a 15 minute YouTube tutorial a while ago.

http://youtu.be/03qGA-GJXjI

I hope that helps!

node-inspector by default tries to pre-load all the code before initiating the debug window. I have had instances, node-inspector just hangs for ever because of this pre-loading. Luckily the newer versions have an option to stop the pre-load thereby making the inspector load faster.

Try node-inspector --no-preload

Standard remote debugging is broken entirely in node 6.5. It's replaced however by a new internal node feature

$ node --inspect --debug-brk build/server/server.js
Debugger listening on port 9229.
Warning: This is an experimental feature and could change at any time.
To start debugging, open the following URL in Chrome:
    chrome-devtools://devtools/remote/serve_file/@62cd277117e6f8ec53e31b1be58290a6f7ab42ef/inspector.html?experiments=true&v8only=true&ws=localhost:9229/node
Debugger attached.

See here - http://arveknudsen.com/?p=346%3Fpage_id%3D346&print=pdf - for more info

--debug-brk is now deprecated

try node --inspect-brk <your starting file name> and then go to chrome and type url chrome://inspect and click on Open dedicated DevTools for Node, the debugger will start, no need of node-inspector