https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/2017/01/debugging-angular-apps/
Debugging Angular apps created with Angular CLI in WebStorm
Angular CLI can help us bootstrap a new Angular app with a ready to useTypeScript 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. Open http://localhost:4200/ to view it in browser.
Note that when the dev server is running, the app will automatically reload if you change any of the source files.
- 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.
In WebStorm 2017.1 or higher
No additional configuration is needed: save the configuration and you’re ready to go.
In WebStorm 2016 (.1, .2 and .3)
Configure the mapping between the files in the file system and the paths specified in the source maps on the dev server. This is required to help WebStorm correctly resolve the source maps.
The mapping should be between the src folder and webpack:///./src
Add this value to the table with the project structure in the debug configuration like this:
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.
- 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.