BatLog v0.9.3

To install BatLog into your Rails app just the gem to your Gemfile

gem 'batlog'

After that run rails generate db_log to create the db_log's table migration. By default BatLog writes to three places - the database, the rails logger and exceptions to exceptional. You can overide this behavior by providing your own loggers or changing the default logger in the configuration.

The cool thing about BatLog is that it adds the concept of context - your logs aren't one time message left by a deity but are part of a flow of a user in specific system and circumstance. BatLog lets you collect a context for the current Thread and dump it as part of the BatLog whenever needed be it in Exception and be it in debug prints.

Log.debug(message, context)
Log.info(message, context)
Log.warn(message, context)
Log.error(message, context)
Log.fatal(message, context)

Use these to record logs. The method indicates the severity.

• message - The message to record to log. Can be of the following types:
  • String - Will be used as-is.
  • Exception - Message will be extracted from exception.
  • Log::LoggableError - Message will be extracted from exception and data will be merged into context
• context - Hash. Extra data that's related to the message.

Events are kept in memory (until clear_events is called or the thread exits) and are only written when one of the above log methods is called.

Log.event(name, data)

Adds an event to Log's internal event array.

• name - String. The name of the event.
• data - Hash. Extra data that's related to the event.

Log.clear_events

Empties the list of events.

Log.assert(condition, message, context, options)

• condition - Boolean. Indicates whether the condition you were testing succeeded. When false - triggers a log.
• message - Same as in the logging methods.
• context - Same as in the logging methods.
• options - Hash. Includes the following:
  • severity - Symbol. The severity to use for logging when the condition fails. (Default: :error)
  • raise_error - Boolean. Indicates whether the assert should raise an error if condition fails. (Default: false)

To configure Log just create an initializer config/initializers/log.rb There you can set the configuration of the log system.

Log.config.loggers << MyCustomLogger
# or
Log.config.loggers = [MyCustomLogger]

Log.config.loggers is an array of the loggers that will be called by the log dispatch each time you write a log. They will be called in the order they appear in the array. Default: [DBlogger, RailsLogger, ExceptionalLogger]

Log.config,raise_on_failed_asserts = false #boolean

Set to true if you want all asserts to raise an exception when they fail. Useful when developing and testing. Default: false

Log.config,raise_on_log_failure = false #boolean

Set to true if you want to raise an exception when one of the loggers raises an exception. If this is false, Log will only try to log the failure using the loggers that didn't fail. Default: false

A logger object needs to implement the following interface:

class YourLogger
  def self.log(severity, message, context, events, metadata)
    # record stuff here
  end
end

• severity - Symbol. The log level. One of the following: debug, info, warn, error, fatal
• message - String.
• context - Hash. Extra data that's related to the message.
• events - Array. A collection of all recorded events prior to the log call. (contents of the array covered in later section)
• metadata - Hash. Extra data related to the logging process, added by other loggers that ran prior to this one.

If your log method returns a Hash, it will be merged into metadata and sent to all subsequent loggers.

Also included with BatLog is the log controller support. To use it we recommend you add it to your ApplicationController by adding these lines to it.

require 'log/controller_support'

include Log::ControllerSupport

This does two things, first it adds a before_filter that captures as much data as it can into the log.context and also hooks for when a CSRF exception occurs