embedding.md

HOWTO embed Node Inspector

Node Inspector provides two ways of embedding in third-party applications.

1. Running in a new node process

1. Start the Node Inspector in a new process using child_process.fork()
2. Add message handler to get notified about Node Inspector events, use msg.event to check which event was emitted.

var fork = require('child_process').fork;

var inspectorArgs = [];
var forkOptions = { silent: true };
var inspector = fork(
  require.resolve('node-inspector/bin/inspector'),
  inspectorArgs,
  forkOptions
);

inspector.on('message', handleInspectorMessage);

function handleInspectorMessage(msg) {
  switch(msg.event) {
    case 'SERVER.LISTENING':
      console.log('Visit %s to start debugging.', msg.address.url);
      break;
    case 'SERVER.ERROR':
      console.log('Cannot start the server: %s.', msg.error.code);
      break;
  }
}

Event: 'SERVER.LISTENING'

Emitted when the HTTP server was bound and is ready to accept connections.

Properties:

• address - Server address as returned by DebugServer.address() (see below).

Event: 'SERVER.ERROR'

Emitted when there was an error while setting up the HTTP server.

Properties:

• error - The error.

2. Running in an existing process

To be done. index.js should expose method for creating and starting a DebugServer instance with a given config.

DebugServer is already exposing the following API:

debugServer.address()

Returns the result of server.address() plus the URL of the Node Inspector page to open in browser.

Example:

{
  port: 8080,
  address: '0.0.0.0',
  url: 'http://localhost:8080/debug?port=5858'
}

Event: 'listening'

Emitted when the HTTP server was bound and is ready to accept connections.

Event: 'error'

• Error Object

Emitted when there is an error in setting up the HTTP server.