@browser-bunyan/console-plain-stream v1.8.0
browser-bunyan
This package is an adaptation of, the Node logging library, Bunyan but specifically for the browser.
Although Bunyan does support being Browserified, it is still a bit bloated with
features which aren't relevant in a browser environment. You can expect a Browserified and Gzipped node-bunyan
to
be around 27kb whereas browser-bunyan
is 3.5kb, including its built-in log streams. With ES Modules and
tree-shaking this can be reduced further.
Current status
Browser Bunyan was originally forked from an already mature library with a rich feature set and stable API. Furthermore, the browser environment is less complex than the server (no real streams etc). Consequently, I've found it doesn't need much work. Hopefully this is a testament to the quality of the codebase. So, don't be too concerned if you don't see that much activity in this repo. Please do raise issues for bugs, feature requests and ideas.
Install
npm install browser-bunyan --save
Usage
Import
You can access Browser Bunyan's API using:
ES modules:
import { createLogger } from 'browser-bunyan';
const logger = createLogger({ name: 'my-logger' });
logger.info('hi on info');
CommonJS
const { createLogger } = require('browser-bunyan');
const logger = createLogger({ name: 'my-logger' });
logger.debug('hi on debug');
Browser global
To use as a global, include as a standard script tag:
<script src="https://unpkg.com/browser-bunyan@1.4.0/lib/index.umd.js"></script>
now bunyan
will be available as a global.
const logger = bunyan.createLogger({ name: 'my-logger' });
logger.warn('hi on warning');
Built-in Log Streams
Bunyan uses "log streams" to customize how each log record is processed. You can write your own to do whatever you want or use the built-in log streams which output log records to the console:
Console Formatted Stream
The core library also includes a dedicated browser console stream with nice formatting:
Use it like this:
import { createLogger, INFO, stdSerializers } from 'browser-bunyan';
import { ConsoleFormattedStream } from '@browser-bunyan/console-formatted-stream';
const log = createLogger({
name: 'myLogger',
streams: [
{
level: INFO, // or use the string 'info'
stream: new ConsoleFormattedStream()
}
],
serializers: stdSerializers,
src: true,
});
log.info('hi on info');
logByLevel
By default this stream will use console.log
for all logging. Pass the option logByLevel
to the
ConsoleFormattedStream
constructor to use the Console API's level specific logging methods (console.error
, console.warn
, console.info
and console.debug
). E.g.
new ConsoleFormattedStream( { logByLevel: true } );
Please note that if you use this option your browser's console may also filter out log output based on level, in addition to the Bunyan stream's log level.
Colors
The colors/css used by ConsoleFormattedStream
are customizable:
new ConsoleFormattedStream({
css: {
levels : {
trace: 'color: DeepPink',
debug: 'color: GoldenRod',
info: 'color: DarkTurquoise',
warm: 'color: Purple',
error: 'color: Crimson',
fatal: 'color: Black',
},
def: 'color: DimGray',
msg : 'color: SteelBlue',
src : 'color: DimGray; font-style: italic; font-size: 0.9em',
}
});
or
const css = ConsoleFormattedStream.getDefaultCss();
css.msg = 'color: cyan';
new ConsoleFormattedStream({ css });
Console Raw Stream
This logs the raw log record objects directly to the console.
import { createLogger, INFO } from 'browser-bunyan';
import { ConsoleRawStream } from '@browser-bunyan/console-raw-stream';
const log = createLogger({
name: 'myLogger',
stream: {
level: INFO,
stream: new ConsoleRawStream(),
}
});
Console Plain Stream
This stream is similar to ConsoleFormattedStream
but does not have colors. This
is useful for environments where the console does not support
console styling with CSS (%c
).
import { createLogger, INFO } from 'browser-bunyan';
import { ConsolePlainStream } from '@browser-bunyan/console-plain-stream';
const log = createLogger({
name: 'myLogger',
stream: {
level: INFO,
stream: new ConsolePlainStream()
}
});
logByLevel
The logByLevel
option is supported in the same way as ConsoleFormattedStream
.
Additional log streams
These streams are not built in to the main Browser Bunyan build. You must install them separately.
Server Stream
The Server Stream sends log records to a server endpoint. You will typically want
to set the log level for server streams to warn
, error
or fatal
- log records
that are for exceptions.
Install
npm install @browser-bunyan/server-stream
To use as a gloabl include the script tag:
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@browser-bunyan/server-stream@1.4.0/lib/index.umd.js"></script>
Usage
import { createLogger, WARN } from 'browser-bunyan';
import { ServerStream } from '@browser-bunyan/server-stream';
const log = createLogger({
name: 'serverLogger',
stream: {
level: WARN,
stream: new ServerStream({
url: '/client-log',
method: 'PUT',
}),
},
});
Notes
- The browser's current url and user agent string will automatically be appended to the log record.
- Log records are sent to the server in JSON batches (an array of record objects) at a defined
throttleInterval
. - If, within a batch, a log message is duplicated, that log record will be deduped and a
count
field is incremented for the single log record - The
flushOnClose
option will flush any unsent log records if the browser window/tab is closed. Internally this usesNavigator.sendBeacon()
which has some caveats you should be aware of before enabling it:- It will only work if the
method
option is set to"POST"
- The payload must currently be sent as
text/plain
so the server endpoint must be configured to parse plain text json payloads.
- It will only work if the
A
writeCondition
function determines if the latest batch of records should be sent. By default, log records will not be sent if the browser is offline (navigator.onLine === false
) or the current user agent is determined to be a bot/crawler. You may add your own write conditions in addition to the default conditions like so:new ServerLogStream({ url: '/client-log', method: 'POST', writeCondition: record => { return ServerLogStream.defaultWriteCondition() && record.msg !== 'GrikkleGrass'; }, })
Options
Option | Default | Description |
---|---|---|
url | /log | Endpoint to send log record batches to (as JSON) |
method | PUT | HTTP method to send record payload with |
withCredentials | false | withCredentials property of the underlying XMLHttpRequest object |
throttleInterval | 3000 | How often to send log record batches (ms) |
writeCondition | ServerLogStream.defaultWriteCondition | A function which must return a boolean. true if the log record can be written. i.e. included in the next batch to send. |
onError | - | A handler function to invoke if the send request fails |
flushOnClose | false | Experimental Send unsent log records if the browser window is closed |
Custom log streams
See the Node Bunyan docs below for more information on how to create you own custom stream(s).
This gist for a "server-stream" is also good example of how to write a log stream that sends log records to the server.
Browser specific features
Logging objects to the console
As per, Bunyan's log API, if you log an object under the
field obj
as the first argument, Browser Bunyan's built-in log streams will log this object
directly to the console:
var myObject = { x: 1, y: 2 };
logger.info({ obj: myObject }, 'This is my object:');
Stream types
Node Bunyan supports various types of streams. In Browser Bunyan, streams are always of type 'raw'.
Features shared with Node Bunyan
The following docs are the node-bunyan docs at time of forking, with necessary modifications and documentation for the stripped features also removed:
Overview of features
- elegant log method API
- extensible streams system for controlling where log records
go (to the console, local storage, the server, etc)
src: true
- lightweight specialization of Logger instances with
log.child
- custom rendering of logged objects with "serializers"
Introduction
Like most logging libraries you create a Logger instance and call methods named after the logging levels:
const { createLogger } = require('browser-bunyan');
const log = createLogger({name: 'myapp'});
log.info('hi');
log.warn({lang: 'fr'}, 'au revoir');
All loggers must provide a "name". This is somewhat akin to the log4j logger "name", but Bunyan doesn't do hierarchical logger names.
Bunyan log records are JSON. A few fields are added automatically: "time" and "v".
{"name":"myapp","hostname":"banana.local","pid":40161,"level":30,"msg":"hi","time":"2013-01-04T18:46:23.851Z","v":0}
{"name":"myapp","hostname":"banana.local","pid":40161,"level":40,"lang":"fr","msg":"au revoir","time":"2013-01-04T18:46:23.853Z","v":0}
Log Method API
The example above shows two different ways to call log.info(...)
. The
full API is:
log.info(); // Returns a boolean: is the "info" level enabled?
// This is equivalent to `log.isInfoEnabled()` or
// `log.isEnabledFor(INFO)` in log4j.
log.info('hi'); // Log a simple string message (or number).
log.info('hi %s', bob, anotherVar); // Uses `util.format` for msg formatting.
log.info({foo: 'bar'}, 'hi');
// Adds "foo" field to log record. You can add any number
// of additional fields here.
log.info(err); // Special case to log an `Error` instance to the record.
// This adds an "err" field with exception details
// (including the stack) and sets "msg" to the exception
// message.
log.info(err, 'more on this: %s', more);
// ... or you can specify the "msg".
Note that this implies you cannot pass any object as the first argument
to log it. IOW, log.info(mywidget)
may not be what you expect. Instead
of a string representation of mywidget
that other logging libraries may
give you, Bunyan will try to JSON-ify your object. It is a Bunyan best
practice to always give a field name to included objects, e.g.:
log.info({widget: mywidget}, ...)
This will dove-tail with Bunyan serializer support, discussed later.
The same goes for all of Bunyan's log levels: log.trace
, log.debug
,
log.info
, log.warn
, log.error
, and log.fatal
. See the levels section
below for details and suggestions.
Streams Introduction
By default, log output is to the browser console and at the "info" level. Explicitly that looks like:
import { createLogger, ConsoleRawStream } from 'browser-bunyan';
var log = createLogger({
name: 'myapp',
stream: new ConsoleRawStream()
level: 'info'
});
That is an abbreviated form for a single stream. You can define multiple streams at different levels.
const log = createLogger({
name: 'myapp',
streams: [
{
level: 'info',
stream: new ConsoleRawStream() // log INFO and above to console
},
{
level: 'error',
path: new PostToServerStream() // record errors on the server
}
]
});
More on streams in the Streams section below.
log.child
Bunyan has a concept of a child logger to specialize a logger for a
sub-component of your application, i.e. to create a new logger with
additional bound fields that will be included in its log records. A child
logger is created with log.child(...)
.
In the following example, logging on a "Wuzzle" instance's this.log
will
be exactly as on the parent logger with the addition of the widget_type
field:
const { createLogger } = require('browser-bunyan');
const log = createLogger({name: 'myapp'});
function Wuzzle(options) {
this.log = options.log.child({widget_type: 'wuzzle'});
this.log.info('creating a wuzzle')
}
Wuzzle.prototype.woos = function () {
this.log.warn('This wuzzle is woosey.')
}
log.info('start');
var wuzzle = new Wuzzle({log: log});
wuzzle.woos();
log.info('done');
Running that looks like (raw):
{"name":"myapp","level":30,"msg":"start","time":"2013-01-04T07:47:25.814Z"}
{"name":"myapp","widget_type":"wuzzle","level":30,"msg":"creating a wuzzle","time":"2013-01-04T07:47:25.815Z"}
{"name":"myapp","widget_type":"wuzzle","level":40,"msg":"This wuzzle is woosey.","time":"2013-01-04T07:47:25.815Z"}
{"name":"myapp","level":30,"msg":"done","time":"2013-01-04T07:47:25.816Z"}
Serializers
Bunyan has a concept of "serializers" to produce a JSON-able object from a JavaScript object, so you can easily do the following:
log.info({req: <request object>}, 'something about handling this request');
Serializers is a mapping of log record field name, "req" in this example, to a serializer function. That looks like this:
function reqSerializer(req) {
return {
method: req.method,
url: req.url,
headers: req.headers
}
}
const log = createLogger({
name: 'myapp',
serializers: {
req: reqSerializer
}
});
Or this:
import { createLogger, stdSerializers } from 'browser-bunyan';
const log = createLogger({
name: 'myapp',
serializers: {req: stdSerializers.req}
});
because Bunyan includes a small set of standard serializers. To use all the standard serializers you can use:
import { createLogger, stdSerializers } from 'browser-bunyan';
const log = createLogger({
...
serializers: stdSerializers
});
Note: Your own serializers should never throw, otherwise you'll get an ugly message on stderr from Bunyan (along with the traceback) and the field in your log record will be replaced with a short error message.
Levels
The log levels in bunyan are as follows. The level descriptions are best practice opinions.
fatal
(60): The service/app is going to stop or become unusable now. An operator should definitely look into this soon.error
(50): Fatal for a particular request, but the service/app continues servicing other requests. An operator should look at this soon(ish).warn
(40): A note on something that should probably be looked at by an operator eventually.info
(30): Detail on regular operation.debug
(20): Anything else, i.e. too verbose to be included in "info" level.trace
(10): Logging from external libraries used by your app or very detailed application logging.
Suggestions: Use "debug" sparingly. Information that will be useful to debug errors post mortem should usually be included in "info" messages if it's generally relevant or else with the corresponding "error" event. Don't rely on spewing mostly irrelevant debug messages all the time and sifting through them when an error occurs.
Integers are used for the actual level values (10 for "trace", ..., 60 for "fatal") and constants are defined for the (bunyan.TRACE ... bunyan.DEBUG). The lowercase level names are aliases supported in the API.
Here is the API for changing levels in an existing logger:
log.level() -> INFO // gets current level (lowest level of all streams)
log.level(INFO) // set all streams to level INFO
log.level("info") // set all streams to level INFO
log.levels() -> [DEBUG, INFO] // get array of levels of all streams
log.levels(0) -> DEBUG // get level of stream at index 0
log.levels("foo") // get level of stream with name "foo"
log.levels(0, INFO) // set level of stream 0 to INFO
log.levels(0, "info") // can use "info" et al aliases
log.levels("foo", WARN) // set stream named "foo" to WARN
Log Record Fields
This section will describe rules for the Bunyan log format: field names,
field meanings, required fields, etc. However, a Bunyan library doesn't
strictly enforce all these rules while records are being emitted. For example,
Bunyan will add a time
field with the correct format to your log records,
but you can specify your own. It is the caller's responsibility to specify
the appropriate format.
The reason for the above leniency is because IMO logging a message should
never break your app. This leads to this rule of logging: a thrown
exception from log.info(...)
or equivalent (other than for calling with the
incorrect signature) is always a bug in Bunyan.
A typical Bunyan log record looks like this:
{"name":"myapp","req":{"method":"GET","url":"/path?q=1#anchor","headers":{"x-hi":"Mom","connection":"close"}},"level":3,"msg":"start request","time":"2012-02-03T19:02:46.178Z","v":0}
Pretty-printed:
{
"name": "myapp",
"req": {
"method": "GET",
"url": "/path?q=1#anchor",
"headers": {
"x-hi": "Mom",
"connection": "close"
},
"remoteAddress": "120.0.0.1",
"remotePort": 51244
},
"level": 3,
"msg": "send request",
"time": "2012-02-03T19:02:57.534Z",
"v": 0
}
Core fields:
v
: Required. Integer. Added by Bunyan. Cannot be overriden. This is the Bunyan log format version (require('bunyan').LOG_VERSION
). The log version is a single integer.0
is until I release a version "1.0.0" of node-bunyan. Thereafter, starting with1
, this will be incremented if there is any backward incompatible change to the log record format. Details will be in "CHANGES.md" (the change log).level
: Required. Integer. Added by Bunyan. Cannot be overriden. See the "Levels" section.name
: Required. String. Provided at Logger creation. You must specify a name for your logger when creating it. Typically this is the name of the service/app using Bunyan for logging.time
: Required. String. Added by Bunyan. Can be overriden. The date and time of the event in ISO 8601 Extended Format format and in UTC, as fromDate.toISOString()
.msg
: Required. String. Everylog.debug(...)
et al call must provide a log message.src
: Optional. Object giving log call source info. This is added automatically by Bunyan if the "src: true" config option is given to the Logger. Never use in production as this is really slow.
Go ahead and add more fields, and nested ones are fine (and recommended) as well. This is why we're using JSON. Some suggestions and best practices follow (feedback from actual users welcome).
Recommended/Best Practice Fields:
err
: Object. A caught JS exception. Log that thing withlog.info(err)
to get:
"err": {
"message": "boom",
"name": "TypeError",
"stack": "TypeError: boom\n at Object.<anonymous> ..."
},
"msg": "boom",
Or use the `bunyan.stdSerializers.err` serializer in your Logger and
do this `log.error({err: err}, "oops")`. See "examples/err.js".
Streams
A "stream" is Bunyan's name for an output for log messages (the equivalent to a log4j Appender). A Bunyan Logger instance has one or more streams. In general streams are specified with the "streams" option:
const bunyan = require('browser-bunyan');
const log = createLogger({
name: "foo",
streams: [
{
stream: new ConsoleRawStream(),
level: "debug"
},
...
]
});
For convenience, if there is only one stream, it can specified with the
"stream" and "level" options (internally converted to a Logger.streams
).
const log = createLogger({
name: "foo",
stream: new ConsoleRawStream(),
level: "debug"
});
If neither "streams" nor "stream" are specified, the default is a stream of
type ConsoleRawStream
at the "info" level.
stream type: raw
Note that in browser-bunyan streams are always raw
Inegrations
Angular 1.x integration:
Integrate with Angular's log provider:
adminApp.config(function($provide) {
$provide.decorator('$log', function($delegate) {
$delegate = bunyan.createLogger({
name: 'myLogger',
streams: [{
level: 'info',
stream: new bunyan.ConsoleFormattedStream(),
}]
});
return $delegate;
});
});
License
MIT. See LICENSE.