Develop Reference

Is there a name for how console.log formats the Json object?

When a json object is printed, for ex in a script executed by node using console.log, it does not fully pretty print the json. It kind of takes middle ground and prints as few lines as possible without losing much in terms of readability.
I was wondering if there is any name for this formatting or an algorithm. I want to implement this formatting in other languages.

console.log in Node.js is basically this:
(value, ...args) => process.stdout.write(util.format(value, ...args) + '\n')
From the documentation on util.format:
If the first argument is not a string then util.format() returns a string that is the concatenation of all arguments separated by spaces. Each argument is converted to a string using util.inspect().
- https://nodejs.org/api/util.html#util_util_format_format_args
Which means that console.log(object) is equivalent to:
> process.stdout.write(util.inspect(object) + '\n');
From the documentation on util.inspect:
The util.inspect() method returns a string representation of object that is intended for debugging. The output of util.inspect may change at any time and should not be depended upon programmatically. Additional options may be passed that alter certain aspects of the formatted string. util.inspect() will use the constructor's name and/or ##toStringTag to make an identifiable tag for an inspected value.
- https://nodejs.org/api/util.html#util_util_inspect_object_showhidden_depth_colors
As far as I can tell there is no "name" for the default formatting settings of util.inspect, other than "compact" as mentioned (a boolean option that is set to true by default) by the util.inspect documentation.

Does console.log invokes toString method of an object?

As per this documentation,
The string representations of each of these objects are appended
together in the order listed and output.
Also as per answer
The + x coerces the object x into a string, which is just [object
Object]:
So, my question is
If I do
str = new String("hello")
console.log(str) //prints the string object but not 'hello'
console.log(""+str) //prints "hello"
So, in first case, it simply prints the object (doesn't invoke the toString() method).
But in second case, it doesn't coerce but simply print the primitive value. Why is that so?
Which method does console.log invokes to print the object?
Please note that - this is not a duplicate of this question.

Console API is not a standard API that is defined in any specification but is something that is implemented across all browsers, so vendors are usually at their liberty to implement in their own fashion as there's no standard spec to define the output of any methods in API.
Unless you check the actual implementation of the Console API for a particular browser, you can never be sure. There's a tracker on GitHub listing the differences between implementation from major browsers.
If you look at the implementation in FF (available here - search for log), it has a comment below
A multi line stringification of an object, designed for use by humans
The actual implementation checks for the type of argument that is passed to log() and based on it's type, it generates a different representation.
Coming to your case, log() prints two different values for strings created using literal notation and strings created using String constructor because they are two different types. As explained here, Strings created using literal notation are called String Primitives and strings created using String constructor are called String Objects.
var str1 = 'test';
var str2 = new String('hello');
typeof str1 // prints "string"
typeof str2 // prints "object"
As the types differ, their string representation differs in the Console API. If you go through the code for FF's Console implementation, the last statement is
return " " + aThing.toString() + "\n";
So to answer your question, Console API in FF calls toString() on the argument only if the argument type is not one of {undefined,null,object,set,map} types. It doesn't always call toString() or valueOf() methods. I didn't check the implementation of Chrome, so I won't comment on that.

It does not utilize toString, you can do something like this
clog = function(msg){console.log(msg.toString());}
clog(myObj);

This is more typing but will invoke obj.toString() as well:
console.log(`${obj}`);

console.log(str) calls str.valueOf() I guess.
From JavaScript- The Definitive Guide
Its job is to convert an object to a primitive value. The valueOf() method is invoked automatically when an object is used in a numeric context, with arithmetic operators (other than +) and with the relational operators, for example. Most objects do not have a reasonable primitive representation and do not define this method.
---edit----Sorry,copy the wrong line, I mean the ""+str,since there's a type converting

JavaScript toString() seems not to be called automatically in NodeJS

The documentation on mozilla.org states: "Every object has a toString() method that is automatically called when the object is to be represented as a text value or when an object is referred to in a manner in which a string is expected. By default, the toString() method is inherited by every object descended from Object. If this method is not overridden in a custom object, toString() returns "[object type]", ..."
Sounds logical: A toString() method will be called. So I defined an own "class" and defined a toString() method:
function DataField(name, dataType) {
// ....
}
DataField.prototype.toString = function() {
return this.type.name + " " + this.name;
}
I instantiate an object like this:
var dataField = new DataField("myint", DataType.INTEGER);
I try to output the object respectively the string representation of the object in NodeJS:
console.log(dataField);
console.log("" + dataField);
console.log(dataField.toString());
The first output differs from the other ones. The first one will give some kind of JSON.stringify() representation of the object. toString() is not called automatically as I'd expect it to be. The second and third output will result in exactly what I'd expect:
INTEGER myint
So I'm a bit confused. That means that toString() will not automatically be called though the explanation of mozilla.org suggests. Is this a regular behaviour in NodeJS or did I missinterpret the explanation on mozilla.org or am I missing something else here?
You might think: Well, then let's just call toString() explicitely if necessary and everything is fine. But there is some inconvenience with that. If I create an array of objects and use console.log() to ouput that array, no toString() will be called. Which means: The output generated is useless. This would mean that if I store objects with explicite implementations of toString() within an array in a container object I will have to implement toString() of the container object in a very specific and incovenient way: I must write code to explicitely create a string representations of any array of objects contained in the container object myself. Of course I could do that, but I would intuitively assume a toString() method to be called automatically therefor eliminating such need for explicite implementations.
Regarding NodeJS it seems that finding information is not that easy on this specific problem. So if you know about this topic any help is appreciated. The question is: What is the most elegant way to create a (human readable) string representation of a data model (= a data container object containing lists of other data objects)?

In Node.js, console.log calls util.format, which does not call toString().

Do any standard JavaScript APIs or libraries return strings as String objects?

Until recently, I didn't realise that there are two types of strings (and bools, and numbers) in JavaScript: primitives such as "blah", and objects such as new String("blah").
They differ in very "gotcha"-prone ways, the biggest one of which seems to be the different typeof value ("string" vs "object"), but a number of other differences exist, some documented at MDN.
There's no point in creating String objects because the primitive strings work just as well, and JSHint even treats this as an error. So I'd really like to pretend String instances don't even exist, and only support primitive strings in my code.
This makes me wonder: can I get a surprise String instance by calling some standard API that returns a string? Or is it really safe to assume that unless someone screws up by explicitly writing new String, I will never see one of these?

This github search shows that some people are using new String.
And this answer has a nice explanation for String obj:
No native JavaScript object, major library or DOM method that returns
a string will return a String object rather than a string value.
However, if you want to be absolutely sure you have a string value
rather than a String object, you can convert it as follows:
var str = new String("foo");
str = "" + str;

I am not aware of any convention to only use primitive strings. There is also an ever growing amount of API's available, and I'm pretty sure every now and then someone will pull the constructor trick. I would like to give some debugging advice on how to spot this quicky, but I think the typeof check is the only obvious way to quicky note the difference.
You could use a check like this answer, although I think it is not worth the trouble:
function isString(string){
return typeof myVar == 'string' || myVar instanceof String;
};
isString("foo"); //returns true
isString(new String("bar")); //returns true
isString({}); //returns false;
Conclusion: I'm afraid you just have to pray that you don't encounter
these quirky corner cases.

How does String.length work in JavaScript?

I want to know how is the string length of a string calculated in js.
Is is a function call or a class data member.
I want to know what happens when we execute the following code :
a = 'this is a string';
console.log(a.length); // what actually happens at this point?
Also if a do this :
a += ' added something';
console.log(a.length); // at what point is the new length calculated
//and/or updated for the object 'a';
And at last, do I need to store the string length in a temp variable while using a loop over the string or can I directly use the following (which one is faster/processor efficient) :
for(var i=0;i<a.length;i++){
// doing anything here
}
Summing up my question, I want to know the processing behind String.length and which practice is better while looping over strings?

A string is immutable in JavaScript.
a += "somestring" doesn't change the length of a string but makes a new string.
This means there is no "new length", but the length is just part of the definition of the string (more precisely it is stored in the same structure in implementations).
Regarding
for(i=0;i<a.length;i++){ // did you forget the 'var' keyword ?
a not so uncommon practice (if you don't change a) was to optimize it as
for (var i=0, l=a.length; i<l; i++)
in order to avoid the reading of the length but if you compare the performances with modern engines, you'll see this doesn't make the code any faster now.
What you must remember : querying the length of a string is fast because there is no computation. What's a little less fast is building strings (for example with concatenation).

Strings are a primitive type. At least that's what the documentation says. But we can access the length of the string as if we are accessing the property of an object(with the dot notation). Which indicates it's an object, Right?
Turns out, whenever we make a call from the string primitive to some property using the dot notation (for example, say length), the Js engine will take this primitive string and wrap it into an equivalent wrapper object, which is a String object. And then, the .length on that String object returns the length.
Interesting thing to note here is, that when we do something like this, our string still stays the same primitive string during all of this. And a temporary object is created to make our string operation work. Once the required property is fetched, this temporary object is deleted from the memory.
Hope this gives some high level understanding.

I'm answering your first question.
I'm also curious about this puzzle so I did some search myself, ended up finding -
Based on String documentation from Mozilla:
String literals (denoted by double or single quotes) and strings
returned from String calls in a non-constructor context (i.e., without
using the new keyword) are primitive strings. JavaScript automatically
converts primitives to String objects, so that it's possible to use
String object methods for primitive strings. In contexts where a
method is to be invoked on a primitive string or a property lookup
occurs, JavaScript will automatically wrap the string primitive and
call the method or perform the property lookup.
So as I understand, when you use somestring.length, the primitive string will first be wrapped as a String object, and then since the object has its property length, so it's just a internal method call to access and return.