Debug flag for the dispatcher

[ferrannp]

As it is written here:

http://www.code-experience.com/async-requests-with-react-js-and-flux-revisited/
There should be only one channel for all state changes: The Dispatcher. This makes debugging easy because it just requires a single console.log in the dispatcher to observe every single state change trigger.

I am missing this "console.log" when the Dispatcher is using "dispatch" so it's very easy and fast to see every time that some action has been dispatched (and I don't need console.log in all the Stores).

Will you be able to add some debug flag to set this console.log on or off? Something like:

Dispatcher.dispatch(payload)
if(DEBUG){
  console.log(payload)
}

Or maybe like React does:

if ("production" !== process.env.NODE_ENV){
  console.log(payload)
}

Thanks in advance!

[balanceiskey]

An alternate you might consider trying that we've had success with is simply creating a DebugStore whose only responsibility is to log payloads.

[ferrannp]

@balanceiskey indeed, that could be a good approach... However, I think adding the second suggested piece of code would be better.

[buberdds]

@ferrannp Yeah, this piece of code won't hurt anyone and is quite useful +1

[kenwheeler]

@balanceiskey @ferrannp I'll be reviewing this this weekend.

[kenwheeler]

I'm not sure if implicitly including a debug mode, like example 2 is really desired as a core feature. That said, does anyone have any ideas around passing a debug flag? I'm having difficulty creating a global debug flag with browserify.

[tomatau]

Perhaps attach a debug flag to the McFly instance?

Webpack has good functionality for global flags but a modular framework should definitely not assume a build process, also, it's nice to support people who like to add their scripts individually to an html file! (without globals)

I find the debug logging store to be the most flexible solution here!

[kraf]

I've been just dropping this snippet in my main entry points:

var Flux = require('wherever-you-build-flux');
Flux.dispatcher.register(function debugOutput(payload) {
    if(localStorage.debugDispatch === "true") {
        console.log(Date(), payload.actionType, payload);
    }
});

I like being able to enable/disable this in the console while the application is running.

@kenwheeler: Browserify gives you access to process.env. I'm pretty sure you can read anything from the environment, not just NODE_ENV.