The Console API provides functionality to allow developers to perform debugging tasks, such as logging messages or the values of variables at set points in your code, or timing how long an operation takes to complete.
The Console API started as a largely proprietary API, with different browsers implementing it, albeit it in inconsistent ways. The Console API spec was created to define consistent behavior, and all modern browsers eventually settled on implementing this behavior — although some implementations still have their own additional proprietary functions. Find out about these at:
Usage is very simple — the console
object — available via window.console
, or WorkerGlobalScope.console
in workers; accessible using just console
— contains many methods that you can call to perform rudimentary debugging tasks, generally focused around logging various values to the browser's Web Console.
By far the most commonly-used method is console.log
, which is used to log the current value contained inside a specific variable.
let myString = 'Hello world';
console.log(myString)
See the console reference page for more examples.