Console Module

Similar to the browser environment of JavaScript node.js provides a console module which provides simple logging and debugging possibilities.

The most important methods provided by the console module are console.log, console.error and console.time. But there are several others like console.info.

console.log

The parameters will be printed to the standard output (stdout) with a new line.

console.log('Hello World');

console.error

The parameters will be printed to the standard error (stderr) with a new line.

console.error('Oh, sorry, there is an error.');

console.time, console.timeEnd

console.time starts a timer with an unique lable that can be used to compute the duration of an operation. When you call console.timeEnd with the same label, the timer stops and it prints the elapsed time in milliseconds to stdout.

Process Module

It is possible to use the process module to write directly into the standard output of the console. Therefore it exists the method process.stdout.write. Unlike console.log this method does not add a new line before your output.

So in the following example the method is called two times, but no new line is added in between their outputs.

Formatting

One can use terminal (control) codes to issue specific commands like switching colors or positioning the cursor.

General

Effect	Code
Reset	\033[0m
Hicolor	\033[1m
Underline	\033[4m
Inverse	\033[7m

Font Colors

Effect	Code
Black	\033[30m
Red	\033[31m
Green	\033[32m
Yellow	\033[33m
Blue	\033[34m
Magenta	\033[35m
Cyan	\033[36m
White	\033[37m

Background Colors

Effect	Code
Black	\033[40m
Red	\033[41m
Green	\033[42m
Yellow	\033[43m
Blue	\033[44m
Magenta	\033[45m
Cyan	\033[46m
White	\033[47m