Tag: debugging

Debugging Web Pages for iOS

Web developers use browser tools like the Web Inspector in Chrome and Safari or the Developer Tools in Firefox to develop, debug and test web pages. In Safari you have to enable the developer menu first: Safari -> Preferences… -> Advanced -> Show develop menu in menu bar

All these tools offer modes where you can display the page layout at various screen sizes. In Safari this is called the Responsive Design Mode and can be found in the Develop menu. This is essential for checking the page layout for mobile devices. There are however some differences in behaviour, which can only be tested on the real devices or in a simulator. For example, dropdown menus can trigger a wheel selector on mobile devices, while the desktop browser renders them as regular dropdown menus, even in responsive design mode.

Here are some tips for debugging web pages for iOS devices in the simulator:

Using Web Inspector with the iOS Simulator

Within the mobile Safari browser you can’t simply open the Web Inspector console as you would do when developing a web page using a desktop browser. But you can connect the Web Inspector of your desktop Safari to the mobile Safari browser instance running in the iOS simulator:

  • Start the iOS simulator from Xcode: Xcode -> Open Developer Tool -> Simulator
  • Select the desired device: Hardware -> Device -> e.g. iOS 12.1 -> iPhone SE
  • Open the web page in Safari within the simulator
  • Open the desktop version of Safari

In Safari’s Develop menu the simulator now shows up as a device, e.g. “Simulator – iPhone SE – iOS 12.1 (16B91)”. The web page you opened in the simulator should be listed as submenu item. If you click this menu item the Web Inspector opens. It’s now connected to the simulated Safari instance and you can debug the mobile variant of your web page.

Workaround for Clearing the Cache

When using a desktop web browser one can easily bypass the local browser cache when reloading a web page by holding the shift key while pressing the reload button. Sometimes this is necessary to see changes in effect while developing a web application. However, this doesn’t work in Safari running within the iOS emulator. There’s a little workaround: You can open the web page in an incognito tab, which means the cache is cleared each time you close the tab and re-open it again in a new incognito tab.

The JavaScript ‘console’ Object

Most JavaScript developers are familiar with these basic functions of the console object: console.log(), .info(), .warn() and .error(). These functions dump a string or an object to the JavaScript console.

However, the console object has a lot more to offer. I’ll demonstrate a selection of the additional functionality, which is less known, but can be useful for development and debugging.

Tabular data

Arrays with tabular structure can be displayed with the console.table() function:

var timeseries = [
 {timestamp: new Date('2016-04-01T00:00:00Z'), value: 42, checked: true},
 {timestamp: new Date('2016-04-01T00:15:00Z'), value: 43, checked: true},
 {timestamp: new Date('2016-04-01T00:30:00Z'), value: 43, checked: true},
 {timestamp: new Date('2016-04-01T00:45:00Z'), value: 41, checked: false},
 {timestamp: new Date('2016-04-01T01:00:00Z'), value: 40, checked: false},
 {timestamp: new Date('2016-04-01T01:15:00Z'), value: 39, checked: false}
];

console.table(timeseries);

The browser will render the data in a table view:

Output of console.table()
JavaScript console table output

This function does not only work with arrays of objects, but also with arrays of arrays.

Benchmarking

Sometimes you want to benchmark certain sections of your code. You could write your own function using new Date().getTime(), but the functions console.time() and console.timeEnd() are already there:

console.time('calculation');
// code to benchmark
console.timeEnd('calculation');

The string parameter is a label to identify the benchmark. The JavaScript console output will look like this:

calculation: 21.460ms

Invocation count

The function console.count() can count how often a certain point in the code is called. Different counters are identified with string labels:

for (var i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
  if (i % 15 == 0) {
    console.count("FizzBuzz");
  } else if (i % 3 == 0) {
    console.count("Fizz");
  } else if (i % 5 == 0) {
    console.count("Buzz");
  }
}

Here’s an excerpt of the output:

...
FizzBuzz: 6 (count-demo.js, line 3)
Fizz: 25 (count-demo.js, line 5)
Buzz: 13 (count-demo.js, line 7)
Fizz: 26 (count-demo.js, line 5)
Fizz: 27 (count-demo.js, line 5)
Buzz: 14 (count-demo.js, line 7)

Conclusion

The console object does not only provide basic log output functionality, but also some lesser-known, yet useful debugging helper functions. The Console API reference describes the full feature set of the console object.