Always Log JSON

https://jahed.io/2018/07/05/always-log-to-json/

by Hedja • 8 years ago

3 2 8 years ago

badrabbit• 8 years ago

Nothing against json but I disagree with that conclusion.

There are tools that support only syslog for example.

Sometimes your aim is to log a large number of events,sometimes you want to log a lot but with less frequency. Syslog or maybe even binary logging might make sense for high volume events due to how the extra json formatting adds up quickly (and that could have a financial cost to it!!). If you want to log a lot of events but the frequency needs to be low due to resource constraints,then json may or may not add to your problem. It may be a problem as an intrmediate format but not so much if the final processed log is also json. If the resource bottleneck is caused by the log processing stage then there almost certainly be a better format. But I am not speaking strictly of JS code like the author.

Hedja• 8 years ago

Author here.

Yes, my conclusion's a bit blunt. I guess the broader takeaway is to not generate log lines in your business logic but instead to use a common API for events so that changing outputs (e.g. to syslog or some other standard) is straight forward, as shown in the example code with the concept of "reporters".

You can also pipe the output from JSON to syslog if format is the main concern and not performance. Like pino-syslog[1] shows.

[1] https://github.com/pinojs/pino-syslog

Always Log JSON

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