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Ways to debug NodeJS Function Apps in Azure

Azure Functions is a server less compute service that enables you to run code on-demand without having to explicitly provision or manage infrastructure. Azure functions can be used to run piece of code in response to a variety of events/triggers. This include HTTP trigger, Queue triggers, time triggers, etc. Here is the list of all supported triggers in Azure functions.

Azure Functions live console

This is the live console which gets opened when you click on any of the functions.Whenever the request is made to the function, the logging statements are printed to this live console. The problem with this console is that, its not reliable. It does not give the print statements always. Also when the functions fails with some internal server error, the logs are not printed properly even up to the point before failure. This logs are good for happy path scenarios.

Azure Functions Kudu console

Its the advance console for azure functions.With KUDU, you can get acess to log files, environment information/variables and also the actual file system on the runner instance that was assigned to your Azure Function.

Azure Functions with Application Insights

Application insights collects log, performance, and error data. It automatically detects performance anomalies and includes powerful analytics tools to help you diagnose issues an to understand how your functions are used. Application Insights can also be used with local function app development.
Azure Functions can be configured to send system-generated log files to Application Insights.

Azure Functions local development environment

Fasted and my personal recommendation to develop APIs in Azure Functions is to set up the environment locally. Azure provided this npm package to simulate the environment locally.
Microsoft has very well documented the setup instructions. 

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