Debugging the server- and the client-side code

With IntelliJ IDEA, you can debug the server-side code of a Node.js application together with its client-side JavaScript code. To do that, you need to create a separate JavaScript Debug configuration in addition to the Node.js configuration and run these two configurations together. You can do that in two ways:

Create a JavaScript Debug configuration from the Edit Configurations dialog (Run | Edit Configurations) and then click to start it, see Debugging an application running on an external web server for details.
Create a JavaScript Debug configuration from the Live Edit tab when creating or editing a Node.js configuration. In this case, the JavaScript Debug configuration will start automatically every time you start the Node.js configuration.

Create a JavaScript Debug configuration from the Node.js configuration

From the main menu, select Run | Edit Configuration.
From the list, select the Node.js run configuration to start together with a JavaScript Debug configuration. In the dialog that opens, switch to the Browser / Live Edit tab.
Select After launch to start a browser automatically when you launch a debugging session.
In the field below, type the URL address to open the application at.
Choose the browser to use from the list next to the After launch checkbox.
- To use the system default browser, select Default.
- To use a custom browser, select it from the list. Note that Live Edit is fully supported only in Chrome.
- To configure browsers, click and adjust the settings in the Web Browsers dialog that opens. For more information, see Web browsers.
Select the With JavaScript debugger checkbox.

Last modified: 16 July 2021