Develop Reference

Retrieving console errors to html

My question is different from the other posts similar to this.
AutoCAD offers developers a means of displaying a URL page inside the application. I created an intranet site for my company with the hopes that users can explore via desktop browser or their AutoCAD application.
The problem is that the browser AutoCAD uses is Chrome version 33 (currently its at 84) - there is no way to update or change the browser either.
I have no way to "inspect" or debug the site inside AutoCAD - and I've come to find out there are many difference in v84 and v33. I'm trying to diagnose errors right now but again, I have no way of accessing the console logs inside the AutoCAD Browser.
Is there a way for me to "alert" any errors that the console is trying to give me? (ie: the page can't find a script reference, there is an unexpected '.', etc...)
NOTE - my site runs great on the most updated Chrome browser (v84 on desktop browser), but some little things are not working right in v33 (in AutoCAD Browser).

If you control the website you can attach a listener on the window to listen for any unhandled exceptions. Add this before all other scripts to make sure everything is captured.
window.on('error', (e) => {
// if error is intresting, do work.
alert(e.message);
});
The handler accepts an ErrorEvent object.
NOTE - This will not capture errors that are triggered in scripts across domain. For example if you are loading google maps, and an error is triggered within that script, you will typically get a 'Script error.' and no other info. This has to do with cross origin policies. You can read more here.
If you need to specifically to capture data sent to console.error you can simply proxy the function. This may not capture anything except for code that explicitly calls console.error and is not recommended.
const error = console.error;
console.error = (...args) => {
// alert(...);
error.apply(console, args);
}

How to write file in Google Chrome App without prompting?

I am fumbling around with the free Chrome Dev Editor on my Chromebook. I am trying to use the fileSystem to read and write .txt files. It is all very wrapped up, not at all like in C. I can no more tell if I am even allowed to do something, let alone where the proper place is to find out how.
I think the files I can see using the Files thingy are in the sandbox that I am allowed to play in (meaning, folders that are accessible by the app?) The root is called Downloads. Sure enough, if I use all the dot calls and callback arguments for the read, as in the examples at developer.chrome.com/apps/filesystem, it works. But I have to have a prompt
every time for both reads and writes.
A little more Googling came up with this trick: (I think it was here in stackoverflow, in fact) a chrome.runtime call, getPackagedDirectoryEntry, that seems to give me a handle to the folder of my app. Great! That's all I need to not have to go through the prompting. For the readfile, anyway.
But then trying to apply the same trick to the writefile did not work. In fact, it did nothing discernible. No errors, no complaints. Nothing. Even though the write file with prompting works fine (so presumably I have the permissions and Blob construction right.) What to do?
Here is my code:
function test(){
// Samsung 303C Chromebook - Chrome Dev Editor - /Downloads/Daily/main.js
// prompted write
chrome.fileSystem.chooseEntry({type:'saveFile'},function(a){
a.createWriter(function(b){
b.write(new Blob(["Programming fun"],{type:'text/plain'}));
},function(e){trace.innerText = 'error is ' + e;});
});
// unprompted read
chrome.runtime.getPackageDirectoryEntry(function(a){
a.getFile('text.txt',{},function(b){
b.file(function(c){
var d = new FileReader();
d.onloadend = function(){trace.innerText = this.result;};
d.readAsText(c);
});
});
});
// unprompted write - why not?
chrome.runtime.getPackageDirectoryEntry(function(a){
a.getFile('new.txt',{create:true},function(b){
b.createWriter(function(c){
c.write(new Blob(["Miss Manners fan"],{type:'text/plain'}));
},function(e){trace.innerText = 'error is ' + e;});
});
});
}

To be fair, Filesystem API is a big mess of callbacks and it's not unreasonable to get drowned in it.
It's not currently documented, but chrome.runtime.getPackageDirectoryEntry returns a read-only DirectoryEntry, and there is no way to make it writable (it's specifically blacklisted).
You probably don't see an error, because it fails at the getFile stage, for which you don't have an error handler.
Unfortunately, for a Chrome App the only option to write out to a real filesystem is to prompt the user. However, you can retain the entry and ask only once.
If you don't need to write out to the real filesystem but need only internal storage, HTML Filesystem API can help you (yes, it's marked as abandoned, but Chrome maintains it since chrome.fileSystem is built on it).
Extensions additionally have access to chrome.downloads API that enables writing to (but not reading) the Downloads folder.
P.S. What you see in Files app is your "real" local filesystem in ChromeOS + mounted cloud filesystems (e.g. Google Drive)

You can use the basic web Filesystem API. First, add the "unlimitedStorage" permission. Then, copy the packaged files to the sandboxed filesystem, like this:
chrome.runtime.getPackageDirectoryEntry(function(package) {
package.getMetadata(function(metadata) {
webkitRequestFileSystem(PERSISTENT, metadata.size, function(filesystem) {
package.copyTo(filesystem.root)
})
})
})

Log JavaScript console into a log file with Firefox

We have a web application which runs in a kiosk mode Firefox, using the RKiosk extension to achieve this. We suspect that we have a very rare error in the system which yields in a JavaScript error. However because we can't access the JavaScript console we can't examine the log.
I'm searching for an option to make Firefox log all JavaScript console messages into a file regardless of the tab and page opened. I can't seem to find any extension for this. I'm already using log4javascript which sends errors back to the server, but it seems that our application crashes in a way that it skips the logging altogether.

Writing to a file sounds like a tedious task to me. It requires privileges that browser code doesn't normally have and you'd have to negotiate with an add-on you'd have to write in order to access file I/O.
From what I understand your issue is
I'd like to make Firefox log all errors
There are several approaches we can do to tackle this
First approach - log everything to localStorage too:
Now, rather than writing to an actual file, you can write to localStorage or IndexedDB instead.
localStorage["myApplog"] = localStorage["myApplog"] || "";
var oldLog = console.log;
console.log = function(){
oldLog.apply(console,arguments); // use the old console log
var message = "\n "+(new Date).toISOString() + " :: "+
Array.prototype.join.call(arguments," , "); // the arguments
localStorage["myApplog"] += message;
}
This is rather dirty and rather slow, but it should get the job done and you can access the log later in local storage. LocalStorage has a ~5MB limit if I recall correctly which I think is enough if you don't go crazy with logging. You can also run it selectively.
Second approach - log only errors
This is similar to what Pumbaa80 suggested. You can simply override window.onerror and only log errors.
// put an empty string in loggedWinErrors first
var oldError = window.onerror || function(){};
window.onerror = function(err,url,lineNumber){
oldError.call(this,err,url,lineNumber);
var err ="\n Error: (file: " + url+", error: "+err+", lineNumber: "+lineNumber+")");
localStorage["loggedWinErrors"] += err;
}
Third and drastic approach - use a VM.
This is the most powerful version, but it provides the most problematic user experience. You run the kiosk in a virtual machine, you detect an uncaught exception - when you do you freeze the machine and save its state, and run a backup VM instead. I've only had to do this when tackling the most fearsome errors and it's not pretty. Unless you really want the whole captured state - don't do this.
Really, do the extension before this - this is tedious but it gets very solid results.
In conclusion, I think the first approach or even just the second one are more than enough for what you need. localStorage is an abstracted storage that web pages get for saving state without security issues. If that's not big enough we can talk about an IndexedDB solution.
It all really depends on the use case you have.

You can use XULRunner...a Mozilla runtime environment for XUL applications. It uses Gecko like Firefox and:
You can access the file system or using the SQLite database to store logs.
You can render your kiosk in fullscreen mode without using extensions.

Have you tried jserrorcollector? We are using it and it works fine (only in Firefox). It's only for Java.
// Initialize
FirefoxProfile ffProfile = null;
ffProfile = new FirefoxProfile();
JavaScriptError.addExtension(ffProfile);
// Get the errors
List<JavaScriptError> jsErrors = JavaScriptError.readErrors(webDriver);
More information: https://github.com/mguillem/JSErrorCollector

Have you considered remote logging?
I commonly assign window.onerror to do send a request to a webserver storing the details of the error remotely. You could do the same with console.log if you preferred.

Try the following console export. It is a plugin for Firebug of Firefox. It's quite handy.
http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/consoleexport/

If you are able/willing to switch from Firefox to Chrome or Opera you would be able to use the Sandboxed Filesystem API to write a local file. See:
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/filesystem/
http://caniuse.com/filesystem
Start in kiosk mode using chrome.exe --kiosk <url>
You would then want to disable Alt-F4 and Ctrl-Alt-Del which on Windows can be done with several third-party tools like Auto Hotkey (Disable Ctrl-Alt-Del Script).

You could use a remote logging script like Qbaka. It catches every JS error and sends it to the Qbaka server. There you can login and see all JS errors. Qbaka stores the exact error message, the script, line number, stack trace and the used browser for each error message.

Capturing JS errors in Chrome

I'm capturing js errors in the application with window.onerror, but the thing is - in Chrome if dev tools isn't opened - then the url parameter passed to onerror handler always equals to the opened url.
While if dev tools is opened - then the url points to the exact .js file the caused the js error.
How do you deal with it? Are there any workarounds?
And to be more clear - here are 2 results:
Uncaught ReferenceError: a is not defined index:122 - this was received after fetching a page
Uncaught ReferenceError: a is not defined List.js:122 - this was received after fetching the same page with dev tools opened. This is an expected result - I've put a(); call to the List.js file for testing.
UPD: this is done for functional testing (using selenium webdriver) - I want to capture js errors for further investigations.

Let's pose the following architecture:
window.addEventListener("error", handleException, false);
function handleException(I_sMsg) {
if (I_sMsg.stack) {
sMsg = I_sMsg.stack.replaceAll(getBaseURL(), "");
alert(sMsg);
} else if (I_sMsg.message) {
alert(I_sMsg.message);
}
return cancelEvent(I_sMsg);
}
Now any throw new Error("description"); will go through the first part of the if statement and have a nice stack for you to parse with the urls.
It also works for unexpected exceptions, having as a result the following message (in this case after calling the unexisting bibi() function)
After further investigation, my framework is using some kind of home made job management (as shown in the stack actually) where every single action belongs to a job.
The job execution method is the following (simplified)
try {
oTask.func.apply(oTask.obj, oTask.prms);
} catch(ex) {
handleException(ex);
return false;
}
So it means every single execution is encapsulated within this single try catch block. As you see, the exception is caught, and passed to the handler. Not the error.
I though it was working in the other file but it was because the call was encapsulated, while within the api.js file directly it was a free call not managed by the framework.

More of a something to try answer really but it might help.
Chrome recently added chrome://inspect/ to the list of handy URLs (see chrome://chrome-urls/ for the complete list). I cannot find the tweet or blog post I read about this unfortunately but I think it was within the last month. The URL works on Chrome 28 for sure.
chrome://inspect/ lists all open tabs with an inspect link which redirects back to the existing open page but also opens DevTools.
I'm thinking that the selenium test could open the site under test in one tab and in a second tab open the inspect page, follow the inspect link back to the test page but this time with DevTools open, allowing window.onerror to capture better errors.
Something like:
document.getElementsByClassName('row')[n].getElementsByTagName('a')[0].click()

Chrome API: Get Window Type

I'm working on a project and run into an issue where I need to distinguish a chrome app window from normal ones. (Specifically I'm using the --app=URL from a bash script) Because of the way things are setup, I have to have run a js script on all windows, but only do something if they are an app window. It seems that the API listed here is what I need to distinguish one window from another, but all I've managed to get are errors saying that a function or object is undefined. So how am I suppose to get the window type from the API with something like window.type?
Additionally, if you know of some other way to tell the difference between chrome windows if they are an app window or not, then that would also work. I really just need to be able to do:
if (window is app) //I don't really care how it's done
{
doSomething();
}
More information:
Tried in both Chrome and Chromium (both fully updated)
Using Ubuntu 18.04
JavaScript is running in the app window and not an extension (not developing an extension)

Can you try the following. In your console
windowType=window.location.host
It should return if you are in app window it will return as "app". Using this you can write your logic
if (windowType === 'app' ) //I don't really care how it's done
{
doSomething();
}
Hope it helps.

Doing windowType.window.location.host returned not the type of window but rather the url provided with the --app=url flag in my bash script. This means that if you open a normal window and go to the same url as provided in the app window, both would return the same url. However, since the normal window would be the same content just a different window type, the JavaScript code that I need to run on the webpage is the same, thus I would want it to run on both windows. So this solution works for me, but for anyone else who is looking for a window specific identifier, and not just a url, I suppose that is still up in the air.
(Thanks Ragavan Rajan)