How to debug using npm run scripts from VSCode?

Question

I was previously using gulp and running gulp to start my application and listeners from the Visual Studio Code debugger but have recently needed to switch to running scripts

Answer 1

My situation was a little different. I was testing an api server and also a client (for that api server). this is what worked for me.

package.json (of the api server)

  "scripts": {
    "start": "DEBUG=users:* PORT=3333 SEQUELIZE_CONNECT=models/sequelize-sqlite.yaml node user-server",
    "debug": "DEBUG=users:* PORT=3333 SEQUELIZE_CONNECT=models/sequelize-sqlite.yaml node --inspect-brk user-server"
  },

launch.json (of the api server)

"configurations": [
    {
        "type": "node",
        "request": "attach",
        "name": "Attach to Remote",
        "address": "localhost",
        "port": 9229,
        "localRoot": "${workspaceFolder}",
        "remoteRoot": "${workspaceFolder}",
        "skipFiles": [
            "<node_internals>/**"
        ]
    },

with that done, I would do the following.

• npm run debug
• you should immediately get something like this - Debugger listening on ws://127.0.0.1:9229/8df6503b-00e9-43da-ac53-c54a013ba53f
• Attach to (in the debug menu) "Attach to Remote" (or whatever name you gave if you have multiple debug configurations) and then hit Run.
• if successful, you will immediately see something like this - Debugger attached

That would run the api server, and also have the debugger start debugging for me.

Finally, to actually test the api client, I would run the api client file like this. note - all files are in the root folder. if your files are distributed elsewhere, you will have to modify the localRoot and remoteRoot accordingly.

PORT=3333 node users-add-testthisman1.js

Here, its important to note the client configuration I had.

 var client = restify.createJsonClient({
  url: 'http://localhost:'+process.env.PORT,
  version: '*'
});

If you have a different configuration, then, your command line will have different arguments, of course.