if you don't want to explicitly create a js file but still want to test your javascript code, you can use snippets to run your JS code.
Follow the steps here:
- Open Dev Tools
- Go to Sources Tab
- Under Sources tab go to snippets, + New snippet
- Paste your JS code in the editor then run Command + Enter on a Mac, or Ctrl + Enter on Windows or Linux. You should see the output in console if you are using console.log or similar to test. You can edit the current web page that you have open or run scripts, load more javascript files. (Just note: this snippets are not stored on as a js file, unless you explicitly did, on your computer so if you remove chrome you will lose all your snippets);
- You also have a option to save as your snippet if you right click on your snippet.
if you don't want to explicitly create a js file but still want to test your javascript code, you can use snippets to run your JS code.
Follow the steps here:
- Open Dev Tools
- Go to Sources Tab
- Under Sources tab go to snippets, + New snippet
- Paste your JS code in the editor then run Command + Enter on a Mac, or Ctrl + Enter on Windows or Linux. You should see the output in console if you are using console.log or similar to test. You can edit the current web page that you have open or run scripts, load more javascript files. (Just note: this snippets are not stored on as a js file, unless you explicitly did, on your computer so if you remove chrome you will lose all your snippets);
- You also have a option to save as your snippet if you right click on your snippet.
Try this:
1. Install Node.js from https://nodejs.org/
2. Place your JavaScript code into a .js file (e.g. someCode.js)
3. Open a cmd shell (or Terminal on Mac) and use Node's Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL) to execute someCode.js like this:
> node someCode.js
Hope this helps!
Videos
If you are trying to just test the functionality of your JavaScript file: create a blank HTML file, add a link to your JS file as you would normally load a JS file from HTML, and open the HTML file in Chrome. Go to the JavaScript console. You'll be able to interact with the functionality of your JS code as usual. You wouldn't need to set up a server for this. If still not clear, here's an example:
<html>
<head>
<script type = "text/javascript" src = "path/to/your/jsfile"></script>
</head>
</html>
You can use a light weight webserver to serve the file.
For example,
1. install Node
2. install the "http-server" (or similar) package
3. Run the http-server package ( "http-server -c-1") from the folder where the script file is located
4. Load the script from chrome console (run the following script on chrome console
var ele = document.createElement("script");
var scriptPath = "http://localhost:8080/{scriptfilename}.js" //verify the script path
ele.setAttribute("src",scriptPath);
document.head.appendChild(ele)
- The script is now loaded the browser. You can test it from console.
Following is a free list of tools you can use to check, test and verify your JS code:
- Google Code Playground
- JavaScript Sandbox
- jsbin
- jsfiddle
- pastebin
- jsdo.it
- firebug
- html5snippet.net
Hope this helps.
If you want to edit some complex javascript I suggest you use JsFiddle. Alternatively, for smaller pieces of javascript you can just run it through your browser URL bar, here's an example:
javascript:alert("hello world");
And, as it was already suggested both Firebug and Chrome developer tools have Javascript console, in which you can type in your javascript to execute. So do Internet Explorer 8+, Opera, Safari and potentially other modern browsers.