Using Firefox, how can I monitor all events that are fired?
JavascriptJqueryFirefox AddonJquery EventsJavascript DebuggerJavascript Problem Overview
I'm trying to debug a web page that makes heavy use of events, and so I need to monitor all events that are fired.
Most of the events are bound using jQuery. Hence, it would be particularly useful if there was a way to specifically monitor only those events.
Javascript Solutions
Solution 1 - Javascript
Of course you can do just fine with Firebug, the console and the scripts tab where you can add breakpoints and watches, but you want to do it smarter / easier obviously.
There is a neat Firebug plugin called EventBug that just logs all the events and groups them by event type so you can expand and see what triggered them.
EventBug doesn't do it realtime, you have to refresh though.
One other way is to use the 'Log Events' feature against any DOM element in Firebug. This does do it realtime and you can see what order events are fired / triggered as well.
Try this:
- Toggle open Firebug
- Right click the element in HTML tab, if you want to see all events then right click
<body> - Choose
Log Eventsfrom the context menu - Make sure the Console tab is enabled
- Click to enable the 'Persist' mode in the Console tab (otherwise Console tab will clear after the page is reloaded)
- You may have to select
Closed(manually) - Voila! watch events stream in the console tab
This is what you see with Log Events:
Also worth trying the FireQuery add-on for Firebug to see what elements in the DOM have jQuery events attached to them and what they are.
And as benvie's answer mentions, this is possible in webkit's developer tools as well.
Solution 2 - Javascript
This has been introduced some versions ago but as of Firefox 35 events associated with an element can be seen on the Inspector: next to the element which you want to see the events (in case there is any) there will be an icon with the 'EV' letters. Click it and you will see a small popup window with the events for that element.
More info: http://flailingmonkey.com/view-dom-events-in-firefox-developer-tools/
Solution 3 - Javascript
This doesnt exist in Firebug I believe, and the underlying problem is lack of support or lack of exposure at the api level. Alternatively, there's only a few ways to subscribe to DOM events: Element.prototype.addEventListener (and window.addEventListener and document.addEventListener and XMLHttpRequest.addEventListener and some others) aside from 'onevent' properties which are observable and interceptable.
But realistically, the WebKit debugger and Chromium's debugger (which is webkit's with extra points) allow one to debug and observe attached listeners. Sometimes it's easier to debug one browsers's bugs in another browser with better exposure of application/runtime state, even when that browser doesn't exhibit the bug.
https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/elements