count-how-many-times-a-function-has-been-called.mdx

category	created	tags	title
Tip	2022-09-27	JavaScript	Count how many times a function has been called

If you want to count how many times a function has been called, you probably think of a global variable:

let counter = 0;

const expensiveFunctionToDebug = () => {
    counter++;
    console.log(`This function has been called: ${counter}`);

    // Function body ...
};

We simply increase the counter by 1 and log the latest value whenever the expensiveFunctionToDebug function is invoked. console has a great method to do the same thing:

const expensiveFunctionToDebug = () => {
    console.count('expensiveFunctionToDebug');

    // Function body ...
};

In the Console tab of browsers, you will see something as following:

expensiveFunctionToDebug: 1
expensiveFunctionToDebug: 2
...
expensiveFunctionToDebug: 10

The console.count function prints the label you pass to it followed by the number of times the function is executed.

See also

• Conditional logging in the Console
• Log a value to the Console
• Log a variable in an arrow function
• Log a variable to the console using conditional breakpoints
• Log an array to the Console