Debugging http Node.js server requests and responses from shell

Here is a cool tip to inspect Node.js running an http process / server. First off, we start a simple http server in Node.js like this:

const http = require('http');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.end("
Why hello world!
\n");
});

server.listen(4242, () => {
    console.log("Server is running...");
});

This sets up a http server in Node.js. The http module is built-in in Node.js, we only have to require it (import in ES6). Now, just enter the following (I use Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL in this case) in your shell to export NODE_DEBUG environment variable: export NODE_DEBUG=http We can now see requests and responses in our Node.js server! (Image below uses Wsl-Terminal as our terminal against WSL).

Finding old Git Branches with WSL and Bash

Finding old branches in Git

I had to find out which branches in a Git repository was old and output it to a file. An old branch is defined to have no commits the last four months. Here is the bash script I ended up with.

#!/bin/bash
resolveOldBranches(){
branchfile="oldbranches.txt"
declare -i branchiteration=0
branchcount=$(git branch -a | wc -l)

if [ ! -e $branchfile ] ; then
 touch $branchfile
fi

#empty the oldbranch file
: > $branchfile

for k in $(git branch -a | sed /\*/d); do


 if [ -z "$(git log -1 --since='4 months ago' -s $k)" ]; then
  echo $k | cut -d/ -f3 >> $branchfile
 fi
 branchiteration=$branchiteration+1
 percentage= bc <<< "scale=2;($branchiteration/$branchcount)*100"


 read -n 1 -t 0.1 input                  # so read doesn't hang
   if [[ $input = "q" ]] || [[ $input = "Q" ]]
   then
      echo # to get a newline after 
echo -e "XXX\n$($percentage)\nAnalyzing $branchiteration of $branchcount $(bc <<< "scale=2;($branchiteration/$branchcount)*100") % done. \n(Exit: Q/q)... \nXXX"

done | whiptail --title "Resolving OpPlan 4 branch ages" --gauge "Analyzing.. (Press Q or q to exit)" 10 60 0


}

resolveOldBranches
cat $branchfile