Node.js - How to dump a Javascript object as JSON (Javascript object inspection)

When debugging your Node.js application, sometimes you will find yourself wanting to inspect an entire object. The Javascript module utils can be extremely helpful in this task.

Imagine you want to inspect the object "myobject" created below

var myobject= new Object();
myobject.property1 = "some object property";
myobject.intproperty = 42;
myobject.child = new Object();
myobject.child.property2 = "a property of the child object";
myobject.onDoSomething = function(arguments){
   console.log("Say hi!");
}

You can dump "myobject" as JSON like this:

var util = require("util");
console.log( util.inspect(myobject) ) ;

utils.inspect also allows controlling what will be dumped and how deep inside the object tree to go. This is done using the arguments showHidden and depth as show below

console.log( util.inspect(myobject, { showHidden: true, depth: 0 }) ) ;

You'll see that only the first level of the object contents is displayed. And you will also see that hidden attributes/objects/properties are dumped. To do a deep inspection of all levels, set depth to null

console.log( util.inspect(myobject, { showHidden: true, depth: null }) ) ;