log2stream

A logging library with an interface inspired by Log4j but removes the concepts of appenders and layouts in favour of streams.

Usage

The TL;DR is that there are factories (usually one) which create loggers which each create log records of various severity levels that you can format, filter and persist freely using streams.

This module can be treated as an ES module:

import * as log2stream from 'log2stream';
// or
import { LoggerFactory } from 'log2stream';

This module can also be treated as a CommonJS module:

const log2stream = require('log2stream');
// or
const { LoggerFactory } = require('log2stream');

Logger Factories

Loggers are created by a factory:

const factory = new LoggerFactory();

Creating Loggers

Creating loggers is simple:

const logger = factory.getLogger('name');

Note: You can only have one logger instance with a given name. Any subsequent attempts to create a logger with the same name will result in the same logger being returned. For example, this would be true:

factory.getLogger('name') === factory.getLogger('name');

Using a logger

You can create log records that highlight severe errors that may stop the application from running:

logger.fatal('This is a fatal error message.');

You can create log records that highlight errors that wouldn't normally stop the application from running.

logger.error('This is an error message.');

You can create log records that highlight potentially harmful situations.

logger.warn('This is a warning message.');

You can create log records that highlight the progress of an application.

logger.info('This is an information message.');

You can create log records that are useful for debugging an application.

logger.debug('This is a debug message.');

In addition to logging a string message, you may also provide additional metadata:

logger.warn('This is a warning message.',
{
    detail : 'Detail of what happened...'
});

Severity levels

There are 5 predefined levels of severity a log record can have:

These levels are all exposed via the log2stream.Level type.

Log record streams

All log records created by a logger are written to their own stream:

const target = new stream.Writable(
{
  write (record, _, callback)
  {
    // ...
  },

  objectMode : true // Important!
});

logger.stream.pipe(target);

Additionally, all log records created by a logger are automatically written to the stream of the factory responsible for creating it:

factory.stream.pipe(target);

Note: Any stream you pipe the logger or factory streams into must have objectMode enabled, as log records are being streamed, not strings or buffers. Read further at the Node.js stream documentation.

Log record structure

Formatting log records

To manipulate log records you will have to pipe the stream of a factory (or logger) into a transformation stream. A utility is provided to help you achieve this:

const formatter = log2stream.transform(record =>
{
    return `${record.category} - ${record.message}`;
});

factory.stream.pipe(formatter);

Filtering log records

There could be times when you want to filter log records. An example would be to pipe all log records of a severity level greater than Warn into the stderr stream.

To achieve this you will have to pipe the stream of a factory (or logger) into a filter stream. A utility is provided to help you achieve this:

const refine = log2stream.filter(record =>
{
    return record.level.isGreaterThan(Level.Warn);
});

factory.stream.pipe(filter);

Getting started

This module is available through the Node Package Manager (NPM):

npm install log2stream

Please Note: Versions of Node lower than v12.0.0 are not supported.

Development

Building

You can build CommonJS and ESM versions of this module that are both minified:

npm run build

Testing

This module also has a robust test suite:

npm test

This includes a code quality check using ESLint. Please refer to the .eslintrc files to familiar yourself with the rules.

License

This module is released under the MIT License.