Debug Visualizer (Preview)
Provides infrastructure to visualize values while debugging.
This extension is still in development. Also, for the best user experience some VS Code APIs are missing - please give your thumbs up here so that these APIs might be provided at some time.
Usage
Install this extension and the extension Node Debug With Pause Events
which is required for technical reasons for now.
Then use a debug configuration like this:
{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"type": "node2-with-pause-event",
"request": "launch",
"name": "Launch Program",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}\\dist\\index.js",
"outFiles": ["${workspaceFolder}/dist/**/*.js"],
"preLaunchTask": "npm: dev"
}
]
}
Use the command Open a new Debug Visualizer View to open a new visualizer view.
There you can enter an expression that is visualized when debugging your application.
Integrated Visualizers
Visualizers present preprocessed data. They are mostly React-Components and live in the webview.
These visualizers are integrated:
- Tree Viewer
- Svg Viewer
- Dot Graph Viewer
- Graph Viewer
- Text Viewer
- Plain Text
- Monaco
Integrated Data Extractors
Data extractors convert arbitrary values into visualizable data. They live in the debugee.
These visualizers are integrated:
- ToString Text Extractor
- TypeScript Ast to Tree Data
- Direct Visualization of
ts.Nodes - Visualization of
Record<string, ts.Node>and[ts.Node]. If the record contains a keyfn, its value is displayed for each node.
- Direct Visualization of
- As Is Data Extractor. Allows to return data directly.
Limitations
Currently, only JavaScript (and thus TypeScript) values can be visualized and only a few visualizations are supported.
See Also
This extension works very well together with my library @hediet/node-reload:




