finding out if console is available

Question

I was wondering, how can i find out with javascript if the console object is available?

i have the problem that if i forget to remove a debug output

Answer 1

maybe...

if (console) {
    // do stuff
}

Answer 2

Defined by firebug, IE8 (need to open the developer tools with F12), Chrome, etc but there is no defined spec for it. There is a console.log wrapper that makes it a very easy to use, cross browser logging solution so if the console doesn't exist your code doesn't explode.

Answer 3

A nice simple and short way of outputting to the console safely is as follows:

window.console && console.log('Debug message');

Answer 4

I always include this in the top of my HTML-header before I load anything else. Debugging with console.debug is just too long for me. And I like to toggle the usage of these console functions.

Don't know how optimized the code is, but it always does the job.

(function() {
    var consoleDisabled = false;
    if (consoleDisabled) {
        window.console = undefined;
    }
    if (window.console == undefined) {
        window.console = {
            debug: function() {
                return true;
            },
            info: function() {
                return false;
            },
            warn: function() {
                return false;
            },
            log: function() {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }
    debug = (function(args) {
        window.console.debug(args);
    });
    info = (function(args) {
        window.console.info(args);
    });
    warn = (function(args) {
        window.console.warn(args);
    });
    log = (function(args) {
        window.console.log(args);
    });
})();
debug(somevar);
info(somevar);
warn(somevar);
log(somevar);

Answer 5

try{
console.log("test")
}
catch(e){
console={},
console.log=function(a){}
}

just put it at the top of your JS file and then use console.log(); without any worry for browser error, i also had this error in IE9

Answer 6

here's what i use. bear in mind that i am only half-heartedly supporting browsers with no support for console. and i only ever use console.log(), but you can see how it can be extended to support console.dir(), console.info(), etc

var console = console || {
    "log": function(stuff) {}
};

I like it because calling it does not cause an error, but it returns [undefined], which i think is appropriate.

Note that many many people before (and after) us have written similar polyfills:

https://gist.github.com/search?q=console+%7C%7C+console