Angular CLI can help us bootstrap a new Angular app with a ready to use TypeScript and Webpack configuration. In this post we’ll see how to debug such apps in WebStorm.
If you have never used JavaScript debugger in WebStorm before, we recommend watching this video first to learn how to get started. The same way you can debug Angular apps in IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm, PyCharm and RubyMine.
We have an app generating with Angular CLI. We are using version 1.0.0-beta.26 – the latest available at the time of creating this post, the end of January 2017. Please note that Angular CLI is still in beta – new versions are released often and they might introduce some breaking changes.
- Run
npm startto get the app running in the development mode.
You can do this either in the terminal or by double-clicking the task in the npm tool window in WebStorm. - Wait till the app is compiled and the Webpack dev server is ready. You can see the app running in the browser ot http://localhost:4200/.
Note that when the dev server is running, the app will automatically reload if you change any of the source files.
- Check if a run/debug configuration named Angular Application already exists in WebStorm. If not, create a new JavaScript debug configuration in WebStorm (menu Run – Edit configurations… – Add – JavaScript Debug) to debug the client-side TypeScript code of your app. Paste http://localhost:4200/ into the URL field.
- Save the configuration, place breakpoints in your code and start a new debug session by clicking the Debug button next to the list of configurations on the top right corner of the IDE. The browser will open on http://localhost:4200/.
- Once a breakpoint is hit, go to the debugger tool window in the IDE. You can explore the call stack and variables, step through the code, set watcher, evaluate variables and other things you normally do when debugging.
There’s a known limitation:
- The breakpoints put in the code executed on page load might not be hit when you open an app under debug session for the first time. The reason is that the IDE needs to get the source maps from the browsers to be able to stop on a breakpoint you’ve placed in an original source, and that only happens after the page has been fully loaded at least once. As a workaround, reload the page in the browser.
In this IDE versions, you need to configure the mapping between the files in the file system and the paths specified in the source maps on the dev server in your debug configuration. This is required to help WebStorm correctly resolve the source maps.The mapping should be between the
src folder and webpack:///./srcAdd this value to the table with the project structure in the debug configuration.To get this mapping, we investigated the content of http://localhost:4200/main.bundle.map file. This is a source map file for the bundle that contains the compiled application source code. Search for main.ts, the main app’s file; its path is webpack:///./src/main.ts.If you have any problems with debugging your application, please contact our tech support. Please share information about your IDE version and breakpoint locations and, if possible, your project.
Your WebStorm Team
I can say that that debugging works A LOT better in 2017.1 with cli.
However there still 2 show stoppers to be fixed before so I can say WebStorm is awesome:
1. var not available with arrow functions: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-25133
2. debug crashes and leaks memory: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-25132
please attend to these issues as I have reported them numerous times,
Angular 2 Kitchen sink: http://ng2.javascriptninja.io
and source@ https://github.com/born2net/Angular-kitchen-sink
Regards,
Sean
Thanks for reporting the issues, we’re investigation and hopefully will be able to fix them soon.
Thanks, I will standby for any help needed.
regards
I work in Node.js, serverless-webpack, Typescript. I have no clue on how to get debugger to work in this environment. Is there help for this?
Do you know any open-source app with a similar setup we can try?
In theory, it should all “just work” if you have source maps (devtool: “source-map” in your Webpack config).
I work in Webstorm 2017 and angular2 with cli and follow every step in your article. When I click the debug button, the chrome show my index page but the breakpoints don’t work at all. What’s more, there is a message in webstorm saying that “WebSocket connection to ‘ws://localhost:4200/sockjs-node/819/wi40mzst/websocket’ failed: Connection closed before receiving a handshake response”.
Any suggestion to fix it? Thanks a lot!
Can you please open a support request and attach idea.log there?
The problem that I have is the inspector kills the debug connection. Which is fine since you are using Jetbrains to debug, but what if you need the responsive viewport features and the touch events. No way to emulate iphone in chrome that I know of without first opening the developer tools. Is there a workaround?
No, sorry, no workaround is available. WebStorm debugger uses the same debugging APIs DevTools use, thus, they can’t work simultaneously. The only possible option, I guess, is to have an app open in 2 different instances of Chrome and use WebStorm debugger in one them and DevTools in another.
Latest 2017.2
I’m guessing it broke when webpack changed the paths from “.” to absolute values
They’ve added this to Chrome 63, which is available in Canary right now.
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/10/devtools-release-notes#multi-client
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=129539
Webpack has changed their paths so debugging no longer works out of the box.
This is the correct mapping needed:
http://localhost:4200/webpack:/
found it by reading this post: https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/2015/09/debugging-webpack-applications-in-webstorm/ and looked at the “scripts” location in the debug window.
What WebStorm version do you use? Starting from version 2017.1 WebStorm doesn’t need any mappings to debug Angular CLI apps.
The fix will be available in the next EAP build: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-27381
I’m using Webstorm 2017.1.4 and I upgrade my application with angularCli 1.1.3: the debug in webstorm doesn’t works no more (instead the debug in Chrome still works). I try to create an new clean application with angularCli 1.1.3 and the debug in Webstorm still not works.
I have the same problem. Using IntelliJ Ultimate 2017.1.4 and angular-cli 1.2.0
The problem started with the upgrade to angular-cli 1.1.2 (1.1.1 still works fine), with no breakpoints working anymore. Any ideas how to get it up and running again?
This is likely the problem caused by recent angular-cli changes: currently webpack generates absolute Windows paths in sourcemap that break the debugging (https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-27381).
As a workaround, please, try the following:
– in terminal, run
ng ejectin project root directory– open the generated webpack.config.js, in line 385 change moduleFilenameTemplate value to
info =>webpack:///${info.resourcePath}:new SourceMapDevToolPlugin({"filename": "[file].map[query]",
"moduleFilenameTemplate": info =>
webpack:///${info.resourcePath},"fallbackModuleFilenameTemplate": "[resource-path]?[hash]",
"sourceRoot": "webpack:///"
}),
– run
npm startto start the application, then use your JavaScript debug configuration for debuggingI this still an issue ?
Using angular-cli 1.7.3 and WebStorm 2018.1 I have followed the instructions in the blog post but breakpoints in WebStorm are not hit.
Hello,
Can you please share a bit more information about your app and where the breakpoints exactly are.
We have tried to debug an app generated with Angular CLI 1.7.3 on Windows and the breakpoints put in the event handlers work fine.
The workaround suggested in another comment applies only to WebStorm 2017.1 and earlier.
You can eject like lena_spb said or just add at the Run/Debug configurations the following path:
http://localhost:4200/webpack:/(Your full path)
Thank you Ron, this one worked for me!
In my example it’s http://localhost:4200/webpack:/C:/Users/%5Busername%5D/dev/%5Bproject-source%5D
Didn’t work for me.
http://localhost:4200/webpack:/C:/Workspace/my-project
Returns this error:
10:18 Error running ‘Debug with Chrome’: Illegal char at index 32: C:/Workspace/my-project\/webpack:/C:/Workspace/my-project
For me it just works fine (using IntelliJ 2017.1.5 and Angular 4 with custom webpack 2 setup which is still a leftover from our angular 2 setup).
However, I can see the objects passed to or declared in any function I debug but I cannot see the values of any member variable. IntelliJ says that all of them are undefined, even after they’ve got assigned a static value during the debug operation.
I configured webpack to use
devtool: 'source-map'and already tried to map the remote url to the full path, but nothing changed.Can anyone help me please?
I found a solution. I changed the devtool to
devtool: eval-source-mapwhich seems to work now.Thanks for this nice tool!
Great that it works fine now! Interesting that eval-source-map option performed better than source-map, though that they are basically the same. We’ll have a closer look.
Is Live Editting possible with angular CLI/webpack and webstorm? If so how?
Angular CLI projects have auto-reload on changes enabled by default. You don’t need to use Live edit for that.
Not necessary. You can use HMR if you want to enable kind of live edit.
Hello!
I have been trying to debug an Angular CLI application with a NodeJs back end server. Both are running on the same machine and using default ports. I have followed the instructions as mentioned on this page and also tried some other options, but I can’t get Webstorm to debug properly. I have the chrome plugin installed. I am using the latest version of Webstorm.
Every time that I click the debug option with the custom configuration settings mentioned here the page does not load. If I open the page on another tab then the page loads. However, I need to wait about ~2 mins for the debugger to stop at the first break point. I don’t know what’s happening. Please help.
I have already referred to the following links to get debugging to work properly.
https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/2017/01/debugging-angular-apps/#comment-302330
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-IsnxZpRrQ
https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/2017/01/debugging-angular-apps/
https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/2017/09/debugging-node-js-apps-in-webstorm/
https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/WI/LiveEdit
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/creating-a-remote-server-configuration.html
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/debugging-javascript-deployed-to-a-remote-server.html
Hi NairN,
Can you please submit a support request (https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/requests/new) and attach screenshots of your run/debug configurations as well as the contents of your log folder (Help > Show log in…)?
If the archive is quite big, you can upload it to https://uploads.services.jetbrains.com/ and let us know its name.
I’m debugging an Angular 4 CLI app using PHP Storm 2017.2.4. So I can set the breakpoints in Chrome and it will stop at that line in Storm and allow me to view variables and step forward etc. That’s all great, but what I really want to do is set the breakpoint in Storm and that bit doesn’t seem to work.
Can you please provide a bit more details: what exact @angular/cli version do you use? what happens with the breakpoints put in the editor?
Hello, just tried this tutorial with Angular-CLI 1.6 with IntelliJ Ultimate 2017.3 and all my breakpoints aren’t hit. I’m using the same exact setup with an older version of CLI and this is working fine. Could you please revise your work with the latest version and tell me what’s going on? Thank you very much.
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-30035 is fixed in 2017.3.3. As a workaround, run
ng eject, then usenpm startto run the app on webpack web server instead of usingng serveThere’ve been some changes in the way Angular CLI 1.5+ configures the source maps. We’ve made some fixes on our side that will address the problem, they will land in WebStorm 2017.3.3.
Could you update the blog post to reflect the latest changes in 2017.3?
Hi Sebastian,
What changes exactly do you mean? That you can have Chrome DevTools open? The blog post doesn’t mention that you can’t. And it doesn’t change the steps you need to do debug the app in WebStorm, does it?
It seems that its now possible to have devtools open in chrome while debugging with IntelliJ.
I’m pulling in my webpack bundled files (served locally using ng serve at http://localhost:4200/dist) into a website that is running at http://localhost:58177, but the breakpoints aren’t being hit. The main site, on port 58177, serves up the tags to the webpack files on port 4200. Am I missing something?
We will reply in the support ticket you’ve created.
Hello,
I have followed the instructions in this post, and everything works fine, apart from a detail.
Breakpoint are not being hit during the bootstrap of the applications. Afterwords, during the usage of the application, they are hit.
I’m using Intellij Ultimate 2017.3
The version of the cli is 1.6.4
I’ve created a new app with “ng new” and added some code just to have a place where to put the breakpoints.
import {Component, OnInit} from ‘@angular/core’;
@Component({
selector: ‘first-shipping’,
templateUrl: ‘./shipping.component.html’,
styleUrls: [‘./shipping.component.css’]
})
export class ShippingComponent implements OnInit {
constructor() {
console.log(
constructor); //BREAKPOINT 1 here}
ngOnInit() {
}
onClick() {
console.log(
onclick); //BREAKPOINT 2 here}
}
During the boostrap, the constructor is called but the breakpoint 1 is ignored.
When i click on the button bound to onclick method, the app correctly stops at breakpoint 2.
Workaround: if I put breakpoint 1 in Chrome instead of Intellij, the breakpoint is not ignored.
Hello, please see the limitation described in the last paragraph of this blog post. The breakpoints in the code that is executed on page load might not be hit when you start the app for the first time: WebStorm needs to load the source maps to resolve them and it might not happen by the time the code under the breakpoint is executed.
These instructions do not work! Webstorm 2017.3.5. This is an absolute deal breaker in terms of me continuing to pay for a subscription for this software when it cannot even debug.
Hello Alan,
Sorry to hear that you had a problem with the debugger.
Can you please provide a bit more details about it? What Angular CLI version do you use? Where the breakpoint is put?
We have just tested debugging a project created with @angular/cli 1.7.3 and everything worked fine.
I upgraded @angular/cli from 1.6.4 to 1.7.3, works with newer angular-cli but not fully backwards compatible for older versions.
Thank you for checking the issue and providing a solution.
It still does not work, breakpoints are not triggered. Cannot pay for such software.
I’ve have just tried debugging the app generated with @angular/cli 1.6.6 (it ‘s not possible to generate a new project with version 1.6.4 anymore because of the broken @angular-devkit/core dependency) and it also worked fine – the breakpoint put in the click handler (as on the screenshot in the post) was hit.
Please contact our technical support and provide a sample project if you want to investigate the issue you have further.
Not working with WebStorm 2018.1.1 and @angular/cli 1.7.4, neither on npm test or start tasks. Frozen in ‘Connecting to localhost:55464’
Can you please send the IDE logs (menu Help – Show logs) to our tech support for the investigation: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
So far we couldn’t reproduce the issue with the same WebStorm and Angular CLI versions, so the logs will be helpful. Thanks!
I am running Version: 2018.1.2 and get the below message when running Debug as instructed in the above article.
Waiting for connection to localhost:24085. Please ensure that the browser was started successfully with remote debugging port opened. Port cannot be opened if Chrome having the same User Data Directory is already launched.
As it’s mentioned in https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/debugging-javascript-in-chrome.html#ws_js_debug_chrome_default_profile, WebStorm needs to pass
--remote-debugging-portoption to Chrome to be able to attach the debugger. But this option can’t be passed to a running Chrome instance. So, if you have modified Chrome configuration in Settings | Tools | Web Browsers to use your custom User Data directory, and Chrome having the same profile is already launched, WebStorm can’t open the debug port, and debugger fails to attach. You have to kill all your Chrome instances and re-start the debug session.If you like to attach to already running Chrome instance, you need using JetBrains IDE Chrome extension, with Update application in Chrome enabled in the Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Debugger | Live Edit per instructions at https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/live-editing.html
forget all this. just use
ng new project-namefromnpm install @angular/clithey generate the intellij project folder for you with run configs.
it just works.
Are there updated instructions for Webstorm 2019? I’m attempting to debug an Angular 7 app and following the details above, my breakpoints don’t trigger.
Process:
1. Add Angular application debug config (localhost:4200, no other settings applied)
2. Add breakpoint within a component method
3.
ng serve4. Run configuration from step 1 (Chrome opens)
5. Perform action that calls breakpoint-containing method
6. Breakpoint does not trigger
Hello Paul,
The steps you have followed should work. We couldn’t reproduce the problem in a simple app. Can you please share a project or some screenshots showing where the breakpoints are set? Is the breakpoint hit after you reload the page in the browser?
Greetings,
i got the issue of debug not working for lazy loaded modules in Angular. Component/Service code from core/shared modules stops correctly but any code from lazy modules is ignored. I get the green breakpoint circles for code from regular modules and the circles are red for code from lazy loaded modules.
Are lazy modules supported?
Things ive tried:
– as described in this article
– in addition installed JetBrains IDE Support extension (chrome) and activated it under Build, … > Debugger > Live Edit and this has shown the same behaviour (regular modules debuggable, lazy loaded modules are not)
Iam using Chrome on macOS, current Angular 7 (new project).
Thanks
Hi Mariusz,
debugging lazy loaded Angular modules works fine for us. Please can you create a new support ticket, providing the detailed information about your setup? The sample project that shows up the issue would be appreciated
the latest jetbrains refuses to hit breakpoints in typescript on a windows angular app runnign oin https
it keeps loading the main.js operating breakpoints out of THAT
reloading the browser from the IDE Extension does nothing and the app runs with no breakpoints being hit
webpack:///./src/main.ts
this document does not cut it
and this product is high risk for commercial field contracting
when it refuses to hit the breakpoints inside my typescript file
read all the threads and docs and tried everything
eager loaded modules
blue in the face
helloworld simple apps are not qualifying as an example to prove this product SHOULD do what its suppose to
the threads on this are unending and its never resolved
Ekaterina
if you want to do a remote web session
I will devote some time for you to repair your product
I have a signiicant app causing this issue
I wont post anything online
I do zoom
contact me at meanstack@hotmail.com and we can proceed and we can help get your product up to snuff and you can see what is preventing it from operating on my machine
I prefer webstorm over vscodeand I will extend my time and help to get this working
but many in the field are veay wary of this not happening we are trying to perform in the field and its critical to be able to debug typescript with seamless fast live reload of typescript thru sourcemaps
– cheers
KEN
Hello Ken,
We are sorry to hear that you’re experiencing problems with WebStorm.
Please contact our technical support using this form: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
We would need information about the WebStorm and Angular versions you are using as well as information about your project setup (tsconfig.json file, project structure).
Thank you!
I’m echoing Meanstack/Ken’s comment. I’ve opened up a request but could never get it resolved. Zoom / Remote control didn’t seem to be an option. But I am really discouraged at Webstorm / IntelliJ not working on this. This problem (possibly perpetuated by constant changes in Angular) just seems to have been dragging on forever.
Hello Marc, can you please share a bit more information about the problem? Can you send a link to the request?
Hello!
I have the same problem as above. Can’t debug Angular app in Intelij IDEA (or WebStorm).
We use lazy loading modules too. But I can’t share the code. It’s commercial one.
Hello Artur, we would really appreciate it if you share some sample project that would help us better understand the project configuration you have and the problem you’re experiencing. Does this problem happens if you debug your app in Chrome’s DevTools?
Ekaterina,
ok, I will try to make a sample project later.
There is no problem when I try to debug the project in VS Code. But I prefer WebStorm..
I thought that debugging in VS Code was a pain but at least that works, unlike anything I have tried in WebStorm using numerous tutorials. This just makes the entire IDE pointless and I see no reason paying for it, especially since it seem to have been a problem for MANY years and never gets fixed.
Hi, could you kindly clarify what exactly is not working as expected? Have you tried creating an issue regarding your problem so that we could help you solve it? If not, please create one here: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/WEB.
Hi,
Please provide a working guide/tutorial for latest WebStorm on how to get a single breakpoint working in WebStorm debugger with a new angular application generated by the Angular CLI, using latest version of Chrome and latest version of NodeJS. Everything installed with default settings. This is more than I have been able to manage for a few days now, and based on other comments over the years, I am far from the only one with these problems.
Lets say the breakpoint should be this:
export class AppComponent {
title = ‘nameofapp’;
}
Thanks.
Or even better, a video of how to do it, that unlike the one linked to at the top of this page actually work. Thanks.
I was actually able to make this work by ignoring written instructions but instead “figure it out”. If it still works fine in a day or two, I will return with a guide on how to do it.
Hi, please keep us posted on how it works and, if possible, let us know which steps worked for you. Meanwhile, we’ll review the information provided in this blog post and think about whether it can be improved somehow.
Hi, I am working on a SaaS full stack project. In webstorm I have all my backend nodeJS servers and my front-end Angular UIs. Notice the plural.
Up to recently, I had one Angular UI, and basic setups for Debugging were hitting breakpoints without any problem. But when I started dealing with 2 UIs, I moved to the ‘Project’ structure of Angular.
Meaning that instead of having /dev/angular-project/src/app as normally we have, I now have the following structure:
Main angular is in /dev/angular-dir/
Then projects and libraries are in ./projects/project1, ./projects/project2, ./projects/library, all from within /dev/angular-dir/.
The main dir is holding the node_modules and package.json and angular.json. Each project subdir hold their ts-config etc.
All versions are pretty much the latest.(Angular 8 and Webstorm)
Now my breakpoints are not being hit anymore.
Any idea if I need to change something in the configurations?
Thanks
Hello Christian,
It sounds like a problem with the source maps. Are breakpoints hit when you debug the app Chrome’s DevTools?
In WebStorm, in the “Remote URLs of local files” section of the JavaScript debug configuration, can you please try to specify the URLs on which each part of your app is running next to the corresponding project folder (e.g.
./projects/project1->localhost:4200/project1(here should be your URL)). Hope it helps!Ekaterina Prigara can you reply to my personal email at beta@tiac.net ?
I am new to angular 8 with node.js and Chrome.
I need a simple step by step explanation of how to debug…have no idea what Karma or Protractor is….I cannot download anything to my laptop due to company rules.
Debugging is so important in developing programs…
Can you help? JK
Hello Leo,
You can debug Angular applications in the same way you can debug any other client-side JavaScript application. You can use Chrome’s DevTools or follow the steps in this blog post to debug in WebStorm.
You can read about testing strategies for Angular applications in this official guide: https://angular.io/guide/testing
We are not experts on Angular development so we can’t provide more details on using the technologies in general, I’m sure there are also lots of great tutorials on working with Angular and testing and debugging apps on the internet.
If you have any WebStorm-specific questions, please contact our tech support.