How can I make NodeJS's console.log always print output within a single line no matter what? - visual-studio-code

Question

Is there any way to format the JSON logged through console.log in the terminal?
I'm logging a lot of debug data and if the the logged data exceeds a certain length, the terminal logs it prettified in many lines. I'd like to change it to log in one line, no matter the length of the data. Is there any way to do that?
In summary, I want to change this log style:
[12:34:56][DEBUG][CODE] - {
data: {
action: 'action',
url: '/path/to/my/api?variableOne=valueOne&variableTwo=valueTwo'
}
}
To this log style:
[12:34:56][DEBUG][CODE] - { data: { action: 'action', url: '/path/to/my/api?variableOne=valueOne&variableTwo=valueTwo' } }

Answer 1

Is there any way to format the JSON logged through console.log in the terminal?
Yes there is. Create a custom console object. See the docs for how to do that and what options you can specify. In particular, see also the inspectOptions docs.
The particular inspectOptions option you are looking for are breaklength and compact:
breakLength: <integer> The length at which input values are split across multiple lines. Set to Infinity to format the input as a single line (in combination with compact set to true or any number >= 1). Default: 80.
compact: <boolean> | <integer> Setting this to false causes each object key to be displayed on a new line. It will break on new lines in text that is longer than breakLength. If set to a number, the most n inner elements are united on a single line as long as all properties fit into breakLength. Short array elements are also grouped together. For more information, see the example below. Default: 3.
So since you asked
I'd like to change it to log in one line, no matter the length of the data
Then you probably want to do something like this:
const { Console } = require('node:console')
console = new Console({
stdout: process.stdout,
stderr: process.stderr,
// ignoreErrors, colorMode, groupIndentation
inspectOptions: {
// ...
breakLength: Infinity,
compact: true,
// ...
}
});
And then you can test it with console.log({a:1,b:2,c:3,hello:"world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\n!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\n!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\n!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"});.
You can also just use the util.inspect function on specific objects you want to make a formatted string for, and then do console.log on the default global console object, passing the returned string.