@tsln/console

The Max console as a Console API object for [v8] scripts: log, info, warn, error, assert, trace, dir, table, group, count, time and the rest. Values are formatted by inspect(), which handles circular references, functions, Map and Set, errors, and summarises Max and Live objects (Maxobj, Dict, LiveAPI, LiveObject) instead of expanding their internals. A leading string can hold format specifiers (%s, %d, %i, %f, %o, %O, %j, %c, %%).

import console = require("./vendor/console");

console.log("tracks:", song.tracks); // tracks: [LiveObject<Track> live_set tracks 0, ...]
console.log("%d of %d", done, total);
console.error("no input on", index); // in red
console.warn("careful"); // "warning: careful", since the Max console has no warning level
console.group("connecting");
console.log("indented");
console.groupEnd();
console.time("render");
console.timeEnd("render"); // render: 12 ms
console.dir(deep, { depth: 6 }); // more than log() shows

The module is also callable, as a shorthand for log(), so import log = require("./vendor/console") and log("loaded") work too.

As the global console

A bundled npm package looks for console as a global. install() provides it, keeping a console Max supplies itself and adding only the methods it lacks:

console.install();
import thing = require("./vendor/thing");

Log file

logToFile(path) also writes every line to a file, timestamped and with its level; logToFile(null) stops. Use an absolute path.

Install

npm install --save-dev @tsln/console

Max's require() searches Max's file path and knows nothing of node_modules, so the package's single CommonJS file, dist/index.js, has to be copied or bundled to somewhere Max can find it (the max-msp repository bundles it to js/vendor/console.js with esbuild), with a declaration file next to it for the types:

// src/vendor/console.d.ts
import console = require("@tsln/console");
export = console;

The package depends on @tsln/max-types for the Max globals it calls (post, error, File).

Where the Console API has no Max equivalent: table posts the data like log, and clear does nothing, since a script can't clear the Max console.