console-log-server

Logs all requests to command line console (stdout) and responds 200 OK.

Useful for quickly viewing what kind of requests your app is sending.

Usage

If you have npm >= v5.2 (comes bundled with node >= v8.2.0) you can use npx to run it directly:

$ npx console-log-server -p 8000

If you have older node (all version >= v0.10 supported!) or just prefer the old fashioned way:

$ npm install console-log-server --global
$ console-log-server -p 8000

Command line options

  Logs all http requests to console

  Usage
    $ console-log-server

  Options
    --port, -p Port Number
    --hostname, -h Host name. You can provide multiple hostname flags (with optional matching port flags) to listen many hostnames.
    --proxy, -P Host(s) to proxy the request to using https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-http-proxy. Syntax: [<path>>]<url>. You can provide different proxies for separate paths.
    --response-code, -c Response response code (ignored if proxied)
    --response-body, -b Response content (ignored if proxied)
    --response-header, -H Response header (ignored if proxied)
    --log-response, -r Log also the response. Enabled by default only for proxied requests. Logged response is fully read to a buffer which might change your api behaviour since response is not streamed directly to client, consider turning off if that is a problem.
    --no-color
    --version
    --date-format, -d Date format supported by https://www.npmjs.com/package/dateformat (default "yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:MM:sso")
    --help
    --default-cors, -C Add "default" cors using https://www.npmjs.com/package/cors default values. By default only enabled for non-proxied responses. Turn on to enable also for proxy responses, turn off to disable completely.
    --silent-start, Do not log "listening", proxy mapping or any other status on start. Only requests and responses.
    --mock-date, Use mocked date value for value of "now". https://www.npmjs.com/package/mockdate
    --raw-body-limit, Max size of raw body supported. Number of bytes or string parseable by bytes library. Default is '5Mb'.
    --indent-response, On by default. Indents response with console.group() when using node >= v8.5.0
    --sort-fields, Off by default. Pretty print headers, query parameters and url-form body fields in sorted order. Does not apply to json bodies.
  Examples

    # basic usage
    $ console-log-server -p 3000

    # customized response
    $ console-log-server -p 3000 -c 201 -b "cool type content" --response-header='Content-Type:application/cool' --response-header='key:value'

    # Log date with UTC date format instead of local with offset
    $ console-log-server -d "isoUtcDateTime"

    # Proxy the request to other host. Response will be the actual response from the proxy.
    $ console-log-server -P http://api.example.com

    # Proxy the requests to multiple hosts based on paths.
    $ console-log-server --proxy="/api/1>http://api-1.example.com" --proxy="/api/2>http://api-2.example.com"

    # Proxy the request to path under other host. Response will be the actual response (with cors headers injected) from the proxy.
    $ console-log-server -P http://api.example.com/v1/cats -C yes

    # Turn off response logging
    $ console-log-server -r no

    # Receive and log raw bodies up to 10Mb
    $ console-log-server -l "10Mb"

    # Turn on response logging for all requests
    $ console-log-server -r yes

    # Don't add default (allow all) cors headers at all
    $ console-log-server -C no

    # Start server to your local IP and localhost. Might be useful when debugging devices connected to your own machine. Ports can be given for each hostname with --port flag(s).
    $ console-log-server -h localhost -h 192.168.0.2

Legacy Node.js support

Are you stuck with old unmaintained node.js version filled with security holes? You know you should upgrade, but you have your reasons. Don't worry, console-log-server is not here to judge, but to help (although you should really upgrade and definitely not run anything unmaintained in production, so judging a little bit here).

Currently all node.js version >= v0.10 are supported. This is done by transpiling to ES5 using babel and requiring core-js for missing types on standalone mode.

Development/forking/building of console-log-server itself requires node >= v15 though and you should always use latest stable node for that.

Only for debugging/development use

Only use this tool for ad-hoc local testing. NEVER run console-log-server in production for multiple reasons:

• It logs all data as is without filters. Including passwords, tokens, user names etc
• It will make performance lot worse
• It might use old/deprecated libraries or node.js version with vulnerabilities

Library use

If you are using console-log-serveras a library and use very old node without newer JS types like Map or Promise you need to polyfill them. Otherwise you get errors like:

"ReferenceError: Promise is not defined"

This is mainly problem with node 0.10 but you could in theory get some errors with node < v6.

Easiest way to fix these is to just load core-js before console-log-server

require('core-js');
var consoleLogServer = require('console-log-server');

Running tests

All tests with installed node version:

npm test

Updating snapshots:

npm test -- --update-snapshots

Compatibility tests for older node versions

npm test:compatibility:all