Capture ALERT window contents

GeoMeskin · October 17th, 2003, 12:51 PM

Is is possible to capture and write to a file the text that would have displayed in an Alert window?

The contents is too large for the Alert window to display completely. I need to see the entire contents.

Can I do this? If so, how please?

alex

joefawcett · October 18th, 2003, 05:30 AM

If this is for debugging and you have control over the page then yes. You will have to allow ActiveX controls to run. If possible add the site to "Trusted Sites" and permit the ActveX settings at the top of the security settings. You can remove the site later if you wish.
Use the following function:

Code:

function Alert(Text)
{
  var FILE_PATH = "C:\log.txt"; //Change to wherever
  var ForAppending = 8;
  var oFSO = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
  var oTS = oFSO.openTextFile(FILE_PATH, ForAppending, true);
  oTS.writeLine(Text);
  oTS.writeBlankLines(1);
  oTS.close();
  oTS = null;
  oFSO = null;
}

and then replace all alert calls with Alert (Capital A).
A simpler solution if you don't need a permanent record is to insert a div in the page with an id of "divMessage" and use:

Code:

function Alert(Text)
{
  document.getElementById("divMessage").innerText = Text;
}

Another thing is to press alt+SPACEBAR when the large alert box is open and move the alert up the page.

--

Joe

GeoMeskin · October 21st, 2003, 08:41 AM

Thanks Joe, for the quick response. I don't know if your suggestion will work, I didn't try it.

My problem was that there was too much text to fit into an ALERT window and the part of the text I needed to see wasn't being displayed. My first question was...how do I capture the output of an ALERT window? After giving it some thought I realized I didn't necessarily have to use an ALERT window. I instead took the string that was being fed to the ALERT window and wrote it out to a new WINDOW object. That was all I really needed.

I do appreciate the help though. Thanks again.