JavaScript: View Source code without Comments

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One my clients had a requirement of viewing an object while debugging, and they wanted to view only the source code, without comments.

I first thought of looking out for a similar approach implemented in one of the javascript minifiers. But on further digging, I found that JavaScript has a toSource() method. The drawback is it is gecko-only and  works only in Firefox. Since the source code had to viewed by only the developers who were debugging the code, ‘works-only-on-firefox’ was accepted.

Here’s the solution in case you have a similar requirement and are ok with a non-standard solution.

OUTPUT
  


As you can see, toSource returned only the JavaScript source and not comments. I really wish this was cross-browser. I will probably try my hands on the JSON.stringify method and see if something similar can be achieved.

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About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, Developer Technologies MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) is the founder and contributor for DevCurry, DotNetCurry and SQLServerCurry. He is the Chief Editor of a Developer Magazine called DNC Magazine. He has also authored two Books - 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls. and The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Follow him on twitter @suprotimagarwal.