Debugging NodeJS Google Cloud Functions Locally with Functions Framework in VSCode

The ability to debug software can give the developers much needed insights into how systems behave under certain inputs. This is an invaluable tool when debugging unexpected behavior in a system as we can see how the state of the system evolves in each step of the code.

For traditional services, it is relatively straightforward to run the service locally with a debug port open for our IDEs to attach to.

With serverless technologies such as Google Cloud functions, it is not as obvious how to run locally let alone debug, as Google Cloud handles the boot of the function.

We will go through the steps that allow us to debug NodeJS based on cloud functions using the ‘functions-framework’ npm package. Read more about the process in our Medium page. The article is contributed by Ayushka Partohap, our talented Software Engineer at GajiGesa.