Quickview
- You can debug your web app using console methods in JavaScript
- If debugging in a custom WebView, you need to implement a callback method to handle debug messages
In this document
See also
If you are testing your web app with a device running Android 4.4 or higher,
you can remotely debug your web pages in WebView
with
Chrome Developer Tools, while continuing to support older versions of Android.
For more information, see Remote
Debugging on Android.
If you don't have a device running Android 4.4 or higher, you can debug your JavaScript using the
console
JavaScript APIs and view the output messages to logcat. If you're familiar with
debugging web pages with Firebug or Web Inspector, then you're probably familiar
with using console
(such as console.log()
). Android's WebKit framework supports most
of the same APIs, so you can receive logs from your web page when debugging in Android's Browser
or in your own WebView
. This document describes how to use the
console APIs for debugging.
Using Console APIs in the Android Browser
Logcat
Logcat is a tool that dumps a log of system messages. The messages include a stack trace when
the device throws an error, as well as log messages written from your application and
those written using JavaScript console
APIs.
To run logcat and view messages, execute
adb logcat
from your Android SDK tools/
directory, or, from DDMS, select
Device > Run logcat. When using the ADT
plugin for Eclipse, you can also view logcat messages by opening the Logcat view, available from
Window > Show View > Other > Android > Logcat.
See Debugging
for more information about
When you call a console
function (in the DOM's window.console
object),
the output appears in logcat. For example, if your web page executes the following
JavaScript:
console.log("Hello World");
Then the logcat message looks something like this:
Console: Hello World http://www.example.com/hello.html :82
The format of the message might appear different depending on which version of Android you're using. On Android 2.1 and higher, console messages from the Android Browser are tagged with the name "browser". On Android 1.6 and lower, Android Browser messages are tagged with the name "WebCore".
Android's WebKit does not implement all of the console APIs available in other desktop browsers. You can, however, use the basic text logging functions:
console.log(String)
console.info(String)
console.warn(String)
console.error(String)
Other console functions don't raise errors, but might not behave the same as what you expect from other web browsers.
Using Console APIs in WebView
All the console APIs shown above are also
supported when debugging in WebView
.
If you're targeting Android 2.1 (API level 7) and higher, you must
provide a WebChromeClient
that implements the onConsoleMessage()
method in order for console messages to appear in logcat.
Then, apply the WebChromeClient
to your WebView
with setWebChromeClient()
.
For example, to support API level 7, this is how your code for onConsoleMessage(String, int, String)
might look:
WebView myWebView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview); myWebView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient() { public void onConsoleMessage(String message, int lineNumber, String sourceID) { Log.d("MyApplication", message + " -- From line " + lineNumber + " of " + sourceID); } });
However, if your lowest supported version is API level 8 or higher, you should instead
implement onConsoleMessage(ConsoleMessage)
. For example:
WebView myWebView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview); myWebView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient() { public boolean onConsoleMessage(ConsoleMessage cm) { Log.d("MyApplication", cm.message()
+ " -- From line " + cm.lineNumber()
+ " of " + cm.sourceId()
); return true; } });
The ConsoleMessage
also includes a MessageLevel
object to indicate the type of console
message being delivered. You can query the message level with messageLevel()
to determine the severity of the message, then
use the appropriate Log
method or take other appropriate actions.
Whether you're using onConsoleMessage(String, int, String)
or onConsoleMessage(ConsoleMessage)
, when you execute a console method
in your web page, Android calls the appropriate onConsoleMessage()
method so you can report the error. For example, with the example code above,
a logcat message is printed that looks like this:
Hello World -- From line 82 of http://www.example.com/hello.html