Question

I am debugging a large JavaScript code base where, at some point, the “console” variable gets nulled when refreshing the page.

Is there a way to set a watch on console and make JavaScript break execution when that value changes (or when a condition (console == null) is true)?

I am using Chrome on Windows 7.

Answer 1

The answer below doesn’t work for window.console because console (like other browser-native environment variables) is treated specially. Any attempt to assign a value to console only “covers up” the original value; it does not replace it. You can’t detect when the console value changes, but you can delete window.console to restore the original environment-supplied value.

For other values, use Object.defineProperty to define a custom setter for some global window.foobar. The setter function runs whenever window.foobar is assigned a new value:

(function() {
    var actualFoobar = window.foobar;

    Object.defineProperty(window, "foobar", {
        set: function(newValue) {
            if(newValue === null) { 
                alert("someone is clobbering foobar!"); // <-- breakpoint here!
            }

            // comment out to disallow setting window.foobar
            actualFoobar = newValue;
        },

        get: function() { return actualFoobar; }
    });

})();

Then, put a breakpoint in that setter function.

This approach will work for global variables or any object property (simply change window to the object that has the property).