web worker console.log

Question

Is it just me, or is console.log() too much to ask for from HTML5 web workers?

I know that manipulating the DOM is blocked because it is potentially dangerous, but is there really any possibility that console.log() could be maliciously exploited by a multithreaded worker?

Answer 1

Agreed things would be a lot nicer, but it's not too hard to hack up a primitive console.log using postMessage. David Flanagan has a nice wrapper here.

Answer 2

Just wanted to post that console.log is now possible atleast within the Chrome Browser.

I do not know which version it was added but 35.0.1916.153 m has it.

Limitation

There is a small limitation with it though, It can only output primitives (strings, numbers, booleans) sometimes single dimension arrays.

And it can only take the first argument within the console log.

Normal Console log:

console.log("status:", _status); // status: working
console.log({ status: _status }); // { "status": working }

Worker Console log:

console.log("status:", _status); // status:
console.log({ status: _status }); // [object Object]

You could use console.log(JSON.stringify({ status: _status })); but this would not handle circular referencing objects and will not output in a pretty/easy to read objects.

Update: You can get pretty print with stringify by doing console.log(JSON.stringify(someObject, null, " "));.