Offirmo’s Practical Logger

for browsers & node & modules

Intro

Offirmo's Practical Logger for TypeScript and JavaScript
does only one thing and does it well:
logging locally(*) better than the built-in Console. 

myLogger.verbose('Starting app...', { env: 'staging' })
myLogger.warn('Server timeout, will retry...', { timeoutMs: 2000, attemptCount: 3 })
myLogger.trace('entering computeStuff()...')
// myLogger.log('message [string]', { key: 'values (optional)' })

// when logging an error, use the 'err' key in the details
} catch (err) {
	myLogger.error('Error processing X', { err })
}

// group API is cool so it's forwarded from Console for convenience
myLogger.group()
myLogger.groupCollapsed()
myLogger.groupEnd()

Log levels: fatal, emerg, alert, crit, error, warn(ing), notice, info, verbose, log, debug, trace, silly

Offirmo's Practical Logger features an isomorphic interface
with node, browser and no-op implementations.

Demo

Live demo: Open the dev tools!

Screenshots

Firefox screenshot...
Chromium screenshot...

Note how we compensate chromium's buggy "info" display:

Safari screenshot...
IE and others screenshot... TODO
Terminal / Node screenshot (dark)...
Terminal / Node screenshot (light)...

Advocacy

Killer features:

Setup

I strongly suggest using the full Universal debug API which contains this one.

TODO

FAQ

Is that used in production somewhere?

I, the author, am using this lib in production for my pet project.

Is it a drop-in replacement for Console?

No, as this logger is not accepting multiple arguments.

Also, this logger encourages being semantic, keeping the console invocations for quick debugs. This way, you can keep your eslint rules forbidding using console.

What if I incorrectly call it like Console? (with more than 2 arguments)

If you're using TypeScript, it should tell you ✔

If not, the lib will secretly try to handle it in an undocumented way. (undocumented because you shouldn't rely on it) Just be assured that any error object will be correctly detected ✔

I'm writing a server, can I send the logs to a remote stash?

Yes. It's not a primary feature, but this logger took inspiration from bunyan and pino. Two possible solutions:

Can we have child loggers?

I decided that this feature, while nice, was complicated to get right (should inherit log lovels? details? Dynamically?) and would greatly increase the complexity and bundle size.

IMO a logger should have a "safe" and straightforward behavior, hence simplicity as a feature.

Are there any tradeoffs?

Yes, all solutions have tradeoffs. Here are the most notable one:

  • For browsers: You no longer get the call site in the dev tools.
  • Slower than Console.x for logged item, but faster for filtered out items
  • If you're using this lib directly (not recommended), no built-in mechanism to change the log level at run time. Please use the Universal debug API instead

Contributing

This lib is part of my monorepo, you'll have to build it fully: https://github.com/Offirmo/offirmo-monorepo#contributing

  1. https://github.com/Offirmo/offirmo-monorepo/tree/master/2-foundation/practical-logger-types
  2. https://github.com/Offirmo/offirmo-monorepo/tree/master/2-foundation/practical-logger-core
  3. https://github.com/Offirmo/offirmo-monorepo/tree/master/2-foundation/practical-logger-minimal-noop
  4. https://github.com/Offirmo/offirmo-monorepo/tree/master/2-foundation/practical-logger-browser
  5. https://github.com/Offirmo/offirmo-monorepo/tree/master/2-foundation/practical-logger-node

Credits