Debugging

Use the :index:`verbose` mode

By default & by design, a Casper instance won't print anything to the console. This can be very limitating & frustrating when creating or debugging scripts, so a good practice is to always start coding a script using these :index:`settings`:

var casper = require('casper').create({
    verbose: true,
    logLevel: "debug"
});

The verbose setting will tell Casper to write every logged message at the logLevel logging level onto the standard output, so you'll be able to trace every step made.

Hook in the deep using :index:`events`

:doc:`Events <events-filters>` are a very powerful features of CasperJS, and you should probably give it a look if you haven't already.

Some interesting events you may eventually use to debug your scripts:

• The http.status.XXX event will be emitted everytime a resource is sent with the HTTP code corresponding to XXX;
• The remote.alert everytime an alert() call is performed client-side;
• remote.message everytime a message is sent to the client-side console;
• step.added everytime a step is added to the stack;
• etc…

Listening to an event is dead easy:

casper.on('http.status.404', function(resource) {
    this.log('Hey, this one is 404: ' + resource.url, 'warning');
});

Ensure to check the :ref:`full list <events_list>` of all the other available events.

Dump serialized values to the console

Sometimes it's helpful to inspect a variable, especially Object contents. The :ref:`utils_dump() <utils_dump>` function can achieve just that:

require('utils').dump({
    foo: {
        bar: 42
    },
});

Localize yourself in modules

If you're creating Casper modules, a cool thing to know is that there's a special built-in variable available in every module, __file__, which contains the absolute path to current javascript file (the module file).

Name your closures

Probably one of the most easy but effective best practice, always name your closures:

Hard to track:

casper.start('http://foo.bar/', function() {
    this.evaluate(function() {
        // ...
    });
});

Easier:

casper.start('http://foo.bar/', function afterStart() {
    this.evaluate(function evaluateStuffAfterStart() {
        // ...
    });
});

That way, everytime one is failing, its name will be printed out in the :index:`stack trace`, so you can more easily locate it within your code.